
Qass. 
Book. 



STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 



AN 



HISTORICAL SURVEY 



CONTROVERSIES PERTAINING TO THE RIGHTS OF CON- 
SCIENCE, FROM THE ENGLISH REFORMATION TO 
THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND. 



BY 



EDWARD B. UNDEEHILL, Esq. 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
BY SEWALL S. CUTTING, 



NEW YOKK: 
PUBLISHED BY LEWIS 

122 NASSAU STREET 
1851. 







Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, 

BY LEWIS COLBY, 

In the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New York. 



PKEFACE. 



A FEW years ago a society was formed in England, called the 
" Hanserd Knollys Society," — so named in honor of a distin- 
guished Baptist minister of the l7th century, — " for the Publica- 
tion of the Works of Early English and other Baptist Writers." 
The first volume issued by this society appeared in 1846, under 
the title, " Tracts on Liberty of Conscience and Persecution, 
1614 — 1661." The second volume, issued in 184Y, contained 
" the Records of a Church of Christ, meeting in Broadmead, 
Bristol, 1640 — 1687." Since then have appeared successively, 
a reprint of the first editions of the first and second parts of 
the " Pilgrim's Progress," by John Bunyan, the " Bloody 
Tenent," by Roger Williams, and the " Necessitie of Separa- 
tion," by John Canne. These works, all of them of great his- 
torical interest and value, are the more valuable for the amount 
of dihgent editorial labor which has been bestowed upon these 
elegant editions. It is to be regretted, that they have attained 
no wider circulation in this country. A few copies only have 
been circulated from the American Baptist Publication Society 
in Philadelphia. Even our public libraries are generally with- 
out them. 

The "Tracts," the "Broadmead Records," and the "Bloody 
Tenent," were edited by Edward B. Underbill, Esq. From the 
Introductions to these volumes the Historical Survey contained 
in the following pages has been taken. The introduction to 
the " Bloody Tenent" is, in strictness. Biographical, but the 
omission of many personal details not connected with the de- 
sign of the present publication, gives it sufficiently an historical 
character, and renders it a fitting conclusion to the volume. It 



VI PREFACE. 

brings down the survey of controversies to the settlement of 
New England, from which point a new work should start, illus- 
trating the progress of religious liberty in this country. 

The present writer has given some attention to this subject, 
with a view to such an undertaking. The materials are abund- 
ant, and are not wanting in interest. Massachusetts and Vir- 
ginia furnished the great battle-fields where the contest was 
most violent, but through nearly all the older states there were 
strifes sufficiently earnest and significant. The authority of 
magistrates over the conscience was, both as a doctrine and a 
practice, too thoroughly a part of English national life, to be 
expelled from the forming institutions of this Western World, 
without long debate. Those who suffered for conscience' sake, 
— who declared steadfastly, through successive generations, the 
principles of rehgious liberty which Roger Williams affirmed 
and illustrated in Rhode Island, and won at last signal and 
glorious triumphs, most certainly merit a record of their deeds. 
Such a record, written in a spirit of candor and discrimination, 
and after a full examination of all available sources of informa- 
tion, it may be believed, would be welcomed by our country- 
men, as an important contribution to our history. The pres- 
ent writer is not prepared to pledge himself to such an attempt ; 
but should no abler hand undertake it, and should Divine 
Providence give him life and leisure, he may, at some future 
period, present such an offering to the public. 



\ 



CONTENTS. 



PAOK 
INTRODUCTION 1 

SECTION I. HENRY VIII 15 

i 

II. EDWARD VI 64 

III. THE BAPTISTS . . , , . . 79 

IV.— MARY 119 

v.- — THE BAPTISTS 127 

VI. ELIZABETH 134 

VII. THE PURITANS . , . , .147 

VTII. THE BROWNISTS *i59 

IX. THE BAPTISTS 169 

X. THE INDEPENDENTS 202 

XI. THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND . . 216 



INTRODUCTION. 



Whoever looks abroad over these American States observes the 
■workings of institutions such as have never before blessed the world. 
N"ot till the darkness of the Middle Ages had yielded to the rising 
dawn of the new and better Ages succeeding ; — not till Feudalism was 
giving place to doctrines and actual developments in which Human 
Rights were recognized, did it please God to discover to the civilized 
world this "Western Hemisphere, and to lay here the foundations of 
new Empires. How marked too was the presence of his guiding 
Hand in partitioning this Hemisphere among those who struggled for 
the prize ! That portion which lay nearest the Old World was un- 
questionably the most important ; — it had not indeed mountains whose 
bowels yielded silver, nor streams whose waters washed out gold, but 
it had a genial clime and a productive soil, capacious harbors and far- 
reaching inland water-courses, with a broad, unmeasured, and ua- 
imagined interior, capable of sustaining the population of Europe five 
times told. Into whose hands should it fall ? By what people should 
it be settled, and whose institutions should find here opportunities for 
boundless development ? It was a critical period in the history of the 
world. Suppose for one moment that Spain had won the prize, — 
Spain, rich, proud, the first of European States in material possessions 
and in rank, but at the same time most bigoted of all in obsequious- 
ness to Rome, — dry, like Gideon's fleece, amid the dews of the Ref- 
ormation,* — and sworn to an everlasting war against civil and relig- 
ious freedom ! Or suppose that this portion of the Continent had 
become the possession of France, which, standing for a while poised 
between the Reformation and the Roman Apostasy, at length fell back 
to the latter, and wedded herself anew to the work of human enslave- 
ment ! Both sought the coveted acquisition. Spain planted her stand- 
ard amid the luxuriant flowers of the South, and France believed that 
the lilies of Bourbon would grow on the cold shores of the St. Law- 
rence. Spain sent her pioneers along the Gulf of Mexico to the Mis- 
sissippi, and France with equal zeal established posts along the 

* Macanlay. 



11 INTRODUCTION. 

Northern Lakes, and far down the same great river of the "West. 
These powers had belted the Eastern half of the Continent, and its 
partition between them was the only prospect which opened to the 
human eye. Alas for the world if such had been the fate of America ! 
But Divine Providence was at this very time training another people 
to become the possessors of this wide domain. The Reformation had 
stirred the English mind to its depths. Looking back now upon the 
history of England for centuries preceding the period of which we are 
speaking, we are able to see in the commingling of races and of insti- 
tutions, and specially in the demands for a purer worship which had 
often sprung from the people, and in the recognition and settlement of 
great and immutable principles of law which had agitated Parliaments 
and Courts, the progress of a Providential discipline which prepared 
England to become Protestant, True, she did not become so without 
long struggles in Church and State. Parties of the Old Learning and 
the 'New contended violently for the mastery, and through successive 
generations confessors and patriots bore their dying testimonies at the 
stake and on the scaffold. But the principles of civil and religious 
liberty had found a place in the English mind from which they could 
not be dislodged. Every struggle, whatever the immediate issue, was 
a triumph on the side of freedom. Principles are more powerful than 
arms, and the contest is never doubtful. "When England accepted the 
Reformation, — and England, as God had trained her, could not do 
otherwise, — she committed herself to the glorious destiny which she 
has fulfilled. She became the Mistress of Nations, and under God the 
Regenerator and Hope of the world. 

To England, pledged to such a mission, God gave for the time this 
Western domain. His purposes, however, could not then be foreseen. 
Those whom the mother country sent hither, some as exiles and some 
as adventurers, brought with them the agitations which rent society at 
home, and out of which were to be eliminated the principles and the 
institutions of freedom. The scenes amid which they planted them- 
selves, the occupations to which their necessities gave rise, the oppor- 
tunities for popular government which their Charters secured and their 
condition rendered indispensable, all conspired to carry forward the 
developments of freedom more rapidly than was possible in the land 
which the colonists had left. And now the purposes of Providence 
became apparent. The Reformation was not more a necessity to 
England, than was the Revolution to the Colonies. That Revolution 
lay along the path of inevitable destiny. It gave to a Continent the 
institutions of which the Reformation in England was the prophecy 
and the pledge. It consecrated this wide and glorious domain to the 
illustration of civil and religious liberty. 



INTRODUCTION. lU 

It requires an effort of attention, and a comparison of our condition 
with that of the people of other countries, to estimate justly the bless- 
ings of our freedom. It is a freedom limited and regulated by law, 
but the limitations and regulations lie just at those points beyond 
which freedom becomes anarchy and a curse. It is the inalienable 
right of every American citizen to seek his own happiness in his own 
way, provided only that he shall not invade the equal rights of his 
neighbors. Every sphere of life is open to every man. The largest 
wealth, the highest stations, are the fair prizes for which all are the 
equally protected competitors. As matters of fact, our merchant- 
princes and our Senators and Presidents are often from humble 
spheres of life, and have worked their way to wealth and rank by 
the force of talents exercised where opportunities were free. Our in- 
stitutions are precisely in harmony with man's nature, and meet his 
conscious wants. They invite him to progress, and have their best 
illustration when he avails himself most of the privileges which they 
furnish. 

It is not so in the older nations. There are seats of power which it 
would be treason to attempt to reach even by honorable means. The 
avenues to wealth and even to knowledge are obstructed by oppres- 
sive restrictions, and society is divided into castes by barriers which it 
is scarcely possible to surmount. And this whole frame-work of op- 
pression is held together by the presence of a mihtary force, which, 
rmder the pretext of defending against invasion from abroad, really is 
maintained to preserve the thrones of tyrants and the ascendency of 
privileged classes at home. The foreigner coming to our shores finds 
it difBcult to put himself fully in sympathy with his new condition. 
Our equality of rights and opportunities is to him a new experience, 
and amid the absence of a military force he wonders what holds our 
society together. At length he learns that the conservative forces of 
American society are spiritual, — that the spirit of freedom is likewise 
the spirit of law, — that an intelligent and virtuous community of free- 
men will maintain social quietness and order, by a law within as un- 
failing as that law of the material world which holds the planets in 
then steady pathway around the sun. There may be, there are, 
crimes against peace and order, and there must be laws and constabu- 
lary forces for the lawless and disturbers of the peace, but it is not 
these laws and forces which maintain the quietness of our great family 
of free citizens. J^"ever was there a government where so little out- 
ward force was seen, — never one where so little was needed. The 
secret hes in the fact that here man has attained and understands his 
rights ; he has attained true freedom, the very spirit of which is rev- 
erential to law. 



IV INTRODUCTION. 

But it was not our purpose to speak at length of civil freedom. 
Our religious freedom is even more our distinction and honor. It is 
Freedom, Other lands may boast of Toleration ; we boast of Free- 
dom. None with us has the right or the power to tolerate. There is 
neither magistrate nor priest of their great clemency to permit A to be 
an Episcopalian, or B to be a Presbyterian, or C to be a Baptist, or D to 
be a Roman Catholic. They are the one or the other because as Free- 
men they are so persuaded, and because, under responsibility to God 
only, they so choose to be. Such is the religious liberty of these 
States. No denomination is patronized, — none is proscribed. The 
State confines its jurisdiction to civil affairs only, and so long as its 
peace is preserved, leaves the domain of Conscience to the unshared 
supremacy of its rightful Lord. With us the State and the Church 
have learned respectively their spheres, and each confines itself within 
its own realm. Our institutions can boast no higher honor than the 
solution of this problem. To many foreigners it is a marvel that the 
State can preserve order without the organized alliance of the Church 
as a moral police, and not less a marvel that the Church can thrive 
without drawing patronage and aid from the State. To us it is no 
marvel. The State derives aid from the Church unquestionably, but 
derives that aid only as the Church untrammelled and free promotes 
sentiments of piety and virtue among the people. Purer because she 
is free, she for that reason thrives best and accomplishes most. Her 
very freedom quickens thought, and awakens energy, and incites to 
prayer, and her power to conserve the State can be illustrated and 
known only when the last link which binds her to the State is sun- 
dered. She demands the right to declare a free gospel to free con- 
sciences, and having that she demands no more. The support of her 
ministry and worship she will derive from the willing offerings of those 
whom her teachings bless. 

How happy our lot is in respect to religious freedom is seen, as in 
the former instance, by comparing our condition with that of the 
people of other, and even the most favored nations. The rising Bap- 
tists of Germany, for no other crime than their faith, have been sub- 
jected to fines, imprisonment and banishment, and even while we write 
are enduring these vexations and wrongs. Baptists have shared the 
same fate in Denmark, and the banishment of a Baptist minister from 
Sweden is fresh in the recollection of the reader as an item of recent 
news. France has belied her clamorous boasts of republicanism as 
much by petty persecutions at home as by crushing the rising liberties 
of Italy. But it is not necessary to seek out special instances of per- 
secution to illustrate the wide differences between our condition and 
that of nations where the Church is connected with the State. The 



INTRODT-OTIOX. V 

Tvhole system of religious establishments is evil only ; and when it 
ceases to be a persecution it becomes a bribe. Under such establish- 
ments religious freedom in its broadest and truest sense is an impos- 
sibility, and the compulsory taxes which -vvring from Dissenters the 
stipends with which priests whom they never hear, and whose doc- 
trines they do not believe, are paid, are among the minor evils of such 
a connection. It is not necessary to allude to Cathohc countries where 
penalties follow the slightest indications of free thought, or to recur to 
the history of those times when the Inquisition sought victims for the 
rack, and the souls of martyrs ascended to heaven amid the flames by 
which their bodies were consumed. 

It is perhaps sufficiently plain, and is generally recognized, that our 
institutions are a growth of many ages, — the fruits of contests carried 
on through successive generations. It may be doubted, however, 
whether .the stages of the growth, and the histories of particular con- 
tests, are as well understood as is desirable, — whether indeed we 
should not prize far more highly our " goodly heritage," and render a 
warmer tribute of gratitude for it, if we more distinctly recognized 
the actors and the incidents in the Struggles and Triumphs of Religious 
Liberty. Our special Liability is to overlook the earlier struggles, and 
the noble braveiy of the earlier combatants. We venture to say that 
it is a limited number, of even intelligent readers, who are accustomed 
to trace the progress of civil freedom farther back than the Revolu- 
tion of 1688, or at farthest than the period of the contests with Charles 
I. and the overthrow of the monarchy. True, they carry in their rec- 
olleclion the testimony borne in general phrases, as in Hume, that 
England is indebted for the liberties of her people, more to the Puri- 
tans than to any other class or party, but a search into the grounds on 
which such testimony is borne, — an inquiry into the circumstances of 
the rise of the Puritans, — the principles which they affirmed, — the 
parties into which they themselves were divided, — their relations to 
the State, — the struggles through which they passed in their earlier 
collisions with the ruling powers, — their sufferings as patriots of whom 
the world was not worthy, and the steady triumphs which prepared 
them for the more notable events of the seventeenth century ; these 
are matters too often regarded with indifference and overlooked. 

It is so likewise in relation to religious liberty. There are multi- 
tudes who, though they may have read of earlier demands for the 
rights of conscience, have nevertheless no distinct apprehension of hard 
contests for religious freedom previous to those which brought the 
Pilgrims to Plymouth Rock. The first great shock, in which the in- 
alienable rights of free consciences were fully and distinctly affirmed 
against the remnants of tyranny which still lingered among the best 



VI INTRODL'GTION. 

of English Protestants, is most generally supposed to have occurred 
on these shores, when Roger Williams confronted the powers of Church 
and State in Massachusetts. Even Bancroft, in his warm eulogy of 
the Baptists as the true champions of intellectual freedom, accounts 
Koger Williams as a discoverer of principles, and writes his name by 
the side of those of Kepler and Kewton.* The truth, however, is 
that the contest in the colony of Massachusetts Bay was an imported 
contest ; it came, with all its distinctly recognized principles, across 
the Atlantic in the breasts of men who had fought the same battles in 
Holland and England, John Cotton and Roger Williams had had 
their teachers in such men as John Robinson and Thomas Helwys. 
Indeed, the whole series of struggles in behalf of religious freedom 
which had occurred in England since the Reformation, had been marked 
by developments of similar character. While the far greater part of 
those who claimed for themselves the right to worship God according 
to the demands of their own consciences, clung still to partial and in- 
consistent views, there were others, fewer in numbers perhaps and 
less influential, who had attained to clearer perceptions, and were the 
true lights of their times. The discussions which sprung up between 
these parties, and their common resistance to the tyranny of the State, 
had been steadily preparing the way for the developments of a later 
period. The course of human events is never accidental — never ca- 
pricious ; it is a connected series, and the men and events of one age 
are as the excitations and causes of preceding times have made them. 
The issues of the reign of James I. had been long in course of prepara- 
tion; and John Robinson and John Cotton, Thomas Helwys and 
Roger Williams, were but the exponents and representatives of the 
long progress of opinion. It was the glory of the two last named, 
that the one gave full form and expression to the rights of conscience 
as an article of religious belief, and maintained his views with singular 
personal boldness and magnanimity — and of the other, that he stated 
and defended the doctrine of " soul-liberty" with great skill and force 
in his writings, and honorably illustrated it in the planting of a civil 
State where consciences, however diverse or eccentric, were never op- 
pressed. That small territory, scarcely noticeable upon a map of the 
great confederacy of States of which it is now a part, has furnished 
the example of religious freedom which that confederacy has copied ; 
and across this wide continent the millions of our people account it as 
their highest distinction and happiness to dwell under institutions 

* Bancroft says, " He was the fli-st person in modern Christendom to assert In its 
plenitude the doctrine of the liberty of conscience, the equality of opinions ^fore 
the law, and in its defence he was the harbinger of Milton, the precursor and the 
superior of Jeremy Taylor." [Vol. i., p. 375.] 



INTRODUCTION. Til 

wliich had their first illustration around the shores of Narragansett 
Bay. 

The historical contributions herewith presented to the reader will 
be found of special value in relation to the point under notice. They 
illustrate those struggles for the rights of conscience which lie back of 
the more familiar contests of later times, and which had effected the 
indispensable preparations for the triumphs finally won. They recount 
the names and the deeds of the men who were in advance of their 
fellows in recognizing with clearness the principles of religious freedom, 
as they were likewise in advance in sufferings for their testimony. 
There will be found in these pages many interesting facts, brought to 
light by patient investigation, and a thoroughness of historical analysis 
which will aid in dispensing praise and blame in just measures. The 
reader will be able both to note with great distinctness the general 
progress of opinion, and to trace the movements of particular parties 
down to the time when the English nation was ripe for the Common- 
wealth, and prepared to plant on these Western shores the germs of 
those glorious institutions under wliich we live. 

Though we are reluctant to detain the reader from the volume to 
which these remarks are only introductory, we think it not unsuitable 
to dwell for a moment upon the period immediately preceding the 
settlement of Massachusetts and the controversy with Roger Williams, 
in order to show, as we have before affirmed, that that controversy 
was no new one, but was essentially the same with that which the 
same parties, Baptists and Independents, had waged on the other side 
of the water.'^ 

In the year 1611, the present English version of the Holy Scriptures 
was given to the world. The event constitutes an era in the world's 
history. That year has however another distinction which will make 
it ever memorable. In 1611 the Baptists issued a Confession of Faith 
in which they say, " that the magistrate is not to meddle with religion, 
or matters of conscience, nor compel men to this or that form of re- 
hgion, because Christ is the King and Lawgiver of the Church and 
Conscience." The gift to the world of that version of the Holy Scrip- 
tures which has shed the light of salvation wherever the spirit of 
Anglo-Saxon adventure has borne the English tongue, and the an- 
nouncement by a Christian denomination of that true liberty of con- 
science under which each man, as his inalienable birth-right, interprets 
that Word for himself and follows freely its biddings, were worthy to 
be contemporaneous events. 

The tyranny of the English Estabhshment had driven a large num- 

• Some of these thoughts were expressed by the writer in the JVezo York Re- 
corder, of which he was then editor, in February, 1848. 



Vlll INTRODUCTION. 

ber of worthy men into exile in Holland. Some of these were Bap- 
tists, some Independents, — fellow-sufferers for their testimony to the 
truth. Prominent among the former were John Smyth, a learned 
man, and once a clergyman of the Establishment, many years af- 
terwards, and without any known authority, spoken of in derision by 
his enemies as a Se-Baptist, — that is, one who had baptized himself,*) 
and Thomas Helwys ; — prominent among the latter was John Robin- 
son, renowned over the world as the " father of the Pilgrims." Mr. 
Smyth very soon died, — not however till he had written largely in 
favor of his new views, and with so much ability, that Bishop Hall 
tells Mr. Robinson : " There is no remedy ; you must go forward to 
Anabaptism or back to us ; all your Rabbins cannot answer the charge 
of your rebaptized brother. * * * He tells you true, — your 
station is unsafe ; either you must go forward to him or come back to 
us." That Mr. Smyth was a man of superior abilities is further indi- 
cated by the fact that Bishop Hall spoke of Mr. Robinson as no more 
than his " shadow." Mr. Smyth was succeeded by Mr. Helwys. And 
what then do we hear of this Christian pastor and his brethren ? Do 
they remain in their exile ? No. Do they migrate to distant portions 
of the world to find a spot in the wilderness, where they may both as- 
sert and enjoy the rights of conscience in quietness ? ISTo. They de- 
termine " to challenge king and state to their faces, and not give way 
to them, no, not a foot." Accordingly, hanging out their flag in the 
Confession to which we have referred, they return to their own 
COUNTRY, to assert there their rights of conscience, and to suffer for 
them if need be. They believed that a conflict for the rights of con- 
science was imminent, and they were ready to participate in its dan- 
gers. Englishmen they were born, and Englishmen they would die. 
But in this movement they had not the sympathy of Mr. Robinson and 
his associates. So strong was the opposition from this source which 
they encountered, that in the year 1612, Mr. Helwys felt called upon 
to defend the return of the Baptists in a book which he published at 
that time. Among the considerations put forth in justification of their 
course, we find the following : — 

" 1. That fleeing from persecution hath been the overthrow of re- 
ligion in this island ; the best able and greater part being gone, and 
leaving behind them some few who, by the others' departure, have had 
their afilictions and their contempt increased, hath been the cause of 
many falling back, and of their adversaries rejoicing. 

" 2. Great help and encouragement would it be to God's people in 
affliction, imprisonment, and the like, to have their brethren's presence 
to administer to their souls and bodies ; and for which cause Christ 

♦ This calumny has been of late successfully refuted by E. B. Underbill, Esq. 



INTRODUCTION?. IX 

■will say, ' I was in prison, and ye visited me ; in distress, and ye com- 
forted me.' "* 

It would be difficult to find heroic conduct justified by more honor- 
able motives. 

If now we advance a little further, (1615,) we find these Baptists 
sending forth a voliune entitled, " Objections : Answered by way of 
Dialogue, wherein is proved, By the Law of God, By the Law of our 
Land, and By his Majesty's [James 1] many testimonies, That no man 
ought to be persecuted for his religion, so he testify his allegiance by 
the Oath, appointed by Law." And what does the reader imagine to 
have been a special occasion for the production of this work ? If not 
already aware of the fact, he will be surprised to learn that Mr. Robin- 
son had put himself in opposition, not only to the return to England of 
the Baptists, but likewise to their sentiments on the rights of conscience. 
Though an exile himself for conscience' sake, his mind still held fast 
the doctrine of the magistrate's jurisdiction over spiritual matters ; and 
he was ready to defend this doctrine against his Baptist brethren who 
at that very moment were " challenging king and state to their faces." 

Let us then leave the Baptists contending for the rights of man, on 
their own soil, and amid the perils of persecution, and turn to the 
writings of Mr. Robinson here alluded to, which were sent forth from 
his more quiet asylum in Holland, His book, published in 1614, is 
entitled, " Of Rehgious Communion, Private and Public, With the 
silencing of the Clamours raised by Mr. Thomas Helwisse against our 
retaining the Baptism received in England ; and administering of Bap- 
tism unto Infants. As also, A Survey of the Confession of Faith, pub- 
lished in certain Conclusions, by the remainder of Mr. Smyth's com- 
pany." 

The latter part only of the book concerns our present purpose. We 
are indebted for the extract to the Hanserd Knollys Society's edition 
of the " Objections" above named. f Mr. Robinson knows too well the 
perfect loyalty of his opponents, and their quiet and conscientious de- 
meanor as good subjects and citizens, to indulge in the common cal- 
umny which charged them with insubordination and rebellion, but he 
insists that the Baptists are wrong in denying to the magistrate au- 
thority in matters of religion. He says : — 

" They add, ' that the magistrate is not to meddle with religion, or 
matters of conscience, nor compel men to this or that form of religion 
because Christ is the King and Lawgiver of the church and conscience, 
James iv. 12.'" 

And will the "father of the Pilgrims" put himself in direct and 

♦ See Benedict's History of the Baptists, Colby's ed. p. 330. 
t Page 92. 

1* 



X INTRODUCTION. 

formal opposition to this sound and comprehensive statement of the 
rights of conscience, and the prerogatives of Christ ? He proceeds : — 

" I answer, that this indeed proves that he may alter, devise, or 
establish nothing in religion othenvise than Christ hath appointed, but 
proves not that he may not use his lawful power lawfully for the fur- 
therance of Christ's kingdom and laws. The prophet Isaiah, speaking 
of the church of Christ, foretells that kings shall be her nursing fathers, 
and queens her nursing mothers ; which, if they meddle not with her, 
how can they be ? And where these men make this the magistrate's 
only work, ' that justice and civility may be preserved amongst men,' 
the apostle teaches another end, which is, that we may lead a peace- 
able life under them in all godliness. It is true they have no power 
against the laws, doctrine, and religion of Christ ; but/o?- the same, if 
their power be of God, they may use it lawfully, and against the con- 
trary. And so it was in special foretold by John, that the kings of the 
earth should make the whore desolate, and naked, and eat her flesh, 
and burn her with fire. 

" This Mr. Helwisse frivolously interprets ' of their spiritual weap- 
ons ;' which are no other than the spiritual weapons of all other 
Christians. Besides that, it is contrary to the clear meaning of the 
Holy Ghost, which is, that these kings should first use their civil 
power for the beast and whore, and after against them to their de- 
struction." 

Thus wrote John Robinson, — not at this time only, for we have be- 
fore us passages from other works of his in which kindred sentiments 
are held forth. Will the reader carefully examine what we have 
quoted ? The magistrate may " use his lawful power laiofully for the 
furtherance of Christ's kingdom and laws." Magistrates " have no 
power against the laws, doctrine, and religion of Christ ; but for the 
same, if their power be of God, they may use it lawfully, and against 
the contrary" "Was ever license for tyranny over souls granted in 
broader terms ? Who but the magistrate himself shall determine the 
lawful use of power, what are the laws and kingdom of Christ, and 
what the contrary ? And then how significant the illustration which 
Mr. Robinson cites from " the kings of the earth," with the protest that 
" spiritual weapons" are not intended ! " These kings should first use 
their civil power for the beast and whore, and after against them to 
their destruction." In other words, if Mr. Robinson's views of proph- 
ecy were such as the use of the illustration would indicate, it was de- 
signed and authorized by the Almighty, that as the civil authorities 
had built up Mohammedanism and the Papacy by persecuting the 
saints, so now the civil authorities might turn around and burn Mo- 
hammedans and Papists, and — which was the doctrine to be deduced 



INTRODUCTION. XI 

— by a fair inference inflict penalties on all varieties of heresy ! The 
persecutions of New England were but the practical exemplification 
of these teachings. 

Let not the reader, however, imagine that we determine our esti- 
mate of the character of John Robinson by his opinions on the authority 
of magistrates. He was a good man, — an honor to the noble race who 
hail him as a spiritual father. If it were our purpose to vindicate his 
character, — as certainly it is not our purpose to defame it, — the ma- 
terials are abundant. Few men have made a deeper impression on 
the world ; fewer still an impression so largely beneficent. "We say 
only that on the point under notice he was m error, and at a time 
when the antagonists whom he affected to despise as " ignorant" and 
" frivolous," were pouring upon him a flood of light which he strangely 
failed to recognize. From him we turn to the testimony of those an- 
tagonists, referring the reader to a few striking passages in the book 
which the Baptists sent forth in reply to this animadversioii upon their 
faith. How wide the difference ! How honorable to them the 
contrast ! 

" The power and authority of the king is earthly, and God hath com- 
manded me to submit to all ordinances of man, and therefore I have 
faith to submit to what ordinances of man soever the king commands, 
if it be a human ordinance and not against the manifest word of God ; 
let him require what he will, I must of conscience obey him, with my 
body, goods, and all that I have. But my soul, wherewith I am to 
worship God, that belongeth to another King, whose kingdom is not 
of this world ; whose people must come willingly ; whose weapons 
are not carnal, but spiritual, (Hanserd Knollys Society's edition, 
p. 107,) 

" I acknowledge unfeignedly that God hath given to magistrates a 
sword to cut off wicked men, and to reward the well-doers. But this 
ministry is a worldly ministry, their sword is a worldly sword, their 
ptmishments can extend no further than the outward man, they can 
but kiU the body. And therefore this ministry and sword is appointed 
only to punish the breach of worldly ordinances, which is all that 
God hath given to any mortal man to punish. The king may make 
laws for the safety and good of his person, state, and subjects, against 
the which whoever is disloyal or disobedient, he may dispose of at his 
pleasure. The Lord hath given him this sword of authority, foreseeing 
in his eternal wisdom, that if this, his ordinance of magisti'acy were 
not, there would be no living for men in the world, and especially for 
the godly ; and therefore the godly have particular cause to glorify 
God for this, his blessed ordinance of magistracy, and to regard it with 
all reverence. 



201 INTRODUCTION. 

" But now the breach of Christ's laws, of the which we all this while 
speak, which is the only thing I stand upon ; his kingdom is spiritual, 
his laws spiritual, the transgression spiritual, the punishment spiritual, 
everlasting death of soul, his sword spiritual, no carnal or worldly 

WEAPON IS GIVEN TO THE SUPPORTATION OF HIS KINGDOM. (lb. pp. 

121, 122.) 

" Magistracy is God's blessed ordinance in its right place ; but let us 
not be wiser than God to devise him a means for the publishing of his 
gospel, which he that had all power had not, nor hath commanded. 
Magistracy is a power of this world ; the kingdom, power, subjects 
and means of publishing the gospel, are not of this world. (lb. p. 133.) 

" If I do take any authority from the king's majesty, let me be 
judged worthy my desert; but if I defend the authority of Christ 
Jesus over men's souls, which appertaineth to no mortal man whatso- 
ever, then know you, that whosoever would rob him of the honor 
which is not of this world, he will tread them under foot. Earthly 
authority belongeth to earthly kings ; but spiritual authority belongeth 
to that one spiritual King who is King of kings." (lb. p. 134.) 

Well spoken all, — and we commend to the special attention of all 
those who think it necessary to defend the Puritans by decrying the 
early Baptists as ignorant, fanatical, and disturbers of the civil peace, 
the unanswerable argumentations by which these positions were sup- 
ported. We regret to say that Mr. Robinson was not convinced, for 
we find him at a later day (1625,) affirming still the authority of 
magistrates in matters of religion. 

Such were the relations of the Baptists of that early period to the 
party which most nearly sympathized with them. They had taken 
bolder strides, — they had attained the true idea of religious freedom, 
and had thus clearly and vigorously stated it to the world. But the 
days of their sufiering for conscience' sake were not yet ended. The 
followers of John Robinson crossed the Atlantic, and they and the Bap- 
tists soon met again on the shores of New-England. The sword of the 
magistrate was now held by those who held Robinson's principles, and 
the Baptists at an early day felt its edge. The struggle was a pro- 
tracted one, but truth was mightier than the sword, and in the end 
the principles of religious liberty, which were a part of Baptist faith, 
triumphed and became the crowning glory of our institutions. 

SEWALL S. CUTTma. 
New York, April 1, 1851. 



STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 



RELIGIOUS LIBEETY. 



STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

OF 

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY, 



SECTION I. 

HEI^RY VIII. 

Amidst the many eminent and remarkable events that sig- 
nahzed the rise and establishment of the Reformation in 
England — next after the introduction of the word of God, 
translated, and for the first time printed in the language of 
the people, in the year 1526, by the martyr Tyndale — there 
is not one of greater moment, nor so productive of large and 
continuing results, as the transference to the reigning sove- 
reign of the ecclesiastical authority till then exercised by the 
pope. The exaltation of the royal prerogative above all 
ecclesiastical claims, and the imposition of a form of belief, 
accordant with the convictions or policy of the secular magis- 
trate, were leading features of that great movement. To 
this, duty, based on a supposed right, sternly called him, 
even should it lead to the forfeiture of the life of a conscien- 
tious opponent. Thus in every country where the Reforma- 
tion took root, and flourished, the church became subordinate 
to the civil power. The royalties of Jesus Christ were swal- 
lowed up in the regale of human potentates. 

It is not within our object to relate the tortuous policy 
unremittingly pursued by noble, priest, and king, during the 



16 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

early part of the sixteentli century, by which the way was 
prepared for the bringing in of the reformed doctrines ; nor 
to mark those prehminary steps, which, terminating in the 
fall of Cardinal Wolsey, who had exercised a more than 
papal authority over the land, ushered in a complete change 
in the religious policy of the state. 

But taking up at this point our national history, we shall 
briefly sketch, from its rise to its settlement in 1603, that 
interference of the secular power in the things of God, which 
has proved itself to be ahke fatal to liberty of conscience, and 
to the scriptural form and purity of the church of Christ. 

It is not improbable that the ambitious cardinal, failing in 
all his efforts to obtain the triple crown, and foiled at his own 
weapons by the very parties he was endeavoring to cajole, 
had at last conceived the idea of erecting an ecclesiastical 
authority in England which should be free from papal con- 
trol.* In the matter of the divorce of Henry from Queen 
Katharine, he had sought to obtain unhmited powers. He 
wished that the sentence of his legatine court should be 
final, subject neither to the revision nor to the reversal of 
the pope.f 

But "his last and highest office as vicar-general, had 
brought into this kingdom a species of authority, altogether 
unknown ; and in doing this, he had put a cup to the lips 
of his royal master, and afforded him one taste, for the first 
time, of the sweetness of dominion over all the clergy of the 
kingdom."]; 

In the cardinal's service had been trained Thomas Crom- 
well. For some time his employment was that of secretary : 
but he had been particularly useful to his master, in the 
suppression of certain monasteries, the revenues of which 

* Tyndale's Practice of Prelates. Works, vol. i. p. 480. Russell's edit 
f Dodd's Chm-ch History, vol. i. p. 103. Tierney's edition. 
X Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, vol. i. p. 224. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. l7 

were devoted to the establishment of Wolsey's colleges at 
Oxford and Ipswich. By and by we shall find him acting 
as vicar-general also, and following, with no mean results, in 
the steps of his predecessor. 

The authority exercised by the cardinal, as legate a latere, 
especially in the celebrated trial of Queen Katharine, was 
the proximate cause of his fall. This power, having its ex- 
istence in the arrogant claims of the papacy, had been often 
a matter of parliamentary interference, denunciation, and 
enactment ; and was therefore exercised in defiance of the 
law. But those statutes were inoperative. "Several car- 
dinals before Wolsey had procured, and executed with im- 
punity, a legatine power which was clearly contrary to 
them ;" and, in his case, with the full knowledge and ap- 
probation of the king, who had even granted letters patent 
to Wolsey, freeing him from the legal consequences of this 
breach of the nation's law.* This, however, mattered not ; 
Wolsey must fall, and with him the papal supremacy. That 
fall made way for the elevation of his servant Cromwell, the 
instrument in the hand of God to overthrow the domination 
of Rome. 

Many things also conspired to render the assumption of a 
regal sovereignty over the church, palatable to all classes of 
the community. The adherents of the new learning, a rap- 
idly increasing section of the people, of course saw without 
regret the papal tiara trodden in the mire. To them such 
an event appeared as the " beginning of days," as " life from 
the dead," Their conviction of the religious errors of Rome, 
and their attachment to the life-giving truths of the scrip- 
tures, just put so providentially into their hands, led them 
to hail with joy the dethronement of antichrist. Experience 
had not taught them, as it has their posterity, how bitter 
are the streams that flow from the fountain of ecclesiastical 

* Burnet's Hist, of Reformation, vol. I p. 204. 8vo. edit, Oxford. 



18 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

authority and power, when diluted and measured out by 
regal hands. 

]^ot much less desirable, though for other 'reasons, did this 
assumption appear to the adherents of the old learning. 
The nation had through long centuries sighed and groaned, 
uttering often inarticulate moanings, while suffering the in- 
tolerable exactions of the papal see. Its wealth was forever 
flowing into the coffers of the church, enriching a gorgeous 
ceremonial, and gloating an idle priesthood. All classes 
were impoverished by the innumerable levies made upon 
them. Crowds of cowled monks, barefooted friars, and Sir 
priests, of innumerable grades,* lined the avenues of heaven 
and hell, to tax earth's pilgrims, stumbling on their way, to 
those regions of joy and woe. And again, these publicans 
and tax-gatherers, were themselves taxed, and their mer- 
chandise of souls excised, to sustain the triple crown in its 
grandeur, and in its pride.f Good Cathohcs mourned over 
this, and longed for some relief. 

The papacy itself had lost much of its former power and 
dread. But a few years since, and Rome, the " holy of 
holies" of Christendom, had been pillaged, and the pope, its 
high priest, a prisoner. And now its bulls and its briefs, its 
anathemas and its blessings, were alike unheeded by the 
nations, except so far as policy dictated their observance, or 
desired their fragment of influence. Mightier than human 
words w^ere being uttered with unwonted power, and souls 
were emancipated from the chains of error and superstition. 

The king's cherished project of a divorce from Katharine 
of Arragon, his queen, seemed also on the point of failing. 

* " For there one sort are your grace, youi' holiness, your fatherhood ; 
another my lord bishop, my lord abbot, my lord prior ; another master 
doctor, father, bachelor, master parson, master vicar, and at the last 
Cometh in simple Sir John," — Tyndale's Pract. of Prelates. Works, vol. i. 
p. 896. 

f Ibid. p. 433 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 19 

The pope, now subject to the wishes of the emperor Charles 
the Fifth, the uncle of the queen, dared not pronounce a 
judgment in Henry's favor. Universities, EngHsh and for- 
eign, had in vain determined from scripture and canon law, 
the unlawfulness of his marriage with liis brother's wife, and 
the invalidity of the pope's dispensation to authorize the 
same ; Rome was silent. That divorce was destined to pluck 
the fairest jewel of the papal tiara from its gorgeous setting, 
*' To the intent that the living may know that the Most High 
ruhth in the Mngdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he 
will, and setteth up over it the basest of men."* 

The House of Commons, after seven years' repose, was 
summoned to meet in 1529. It evinced much determination 
to hmit the extortions and immunities, so long, and so profit- 
ably to the papacy, submitted to. Their short session of 
about six weeks, was signalized by a bold and successful 
attack upon some of the leading sources of clerical wealth. 
Certain bills for the correction of the abuses of ecclesiastical 
power, were passed, and soon laid before the Lords ; but 
they left not the hands of the Commons " without severe re- 
flections on the vices and corruptions of the clergy of that 
time; which were believed to flow from men who favored 
Luther's doctrine in their hearts. "f It was not without 
much debate, and opposition from the clergy, the conserva- 
tors of all profitable abuses, that the bills were sufiered to 
pass ; Fisher, bishop of Rochester, bitterly complaining, that 
" the charge of abuses on the hierarchy proceeded from dis- 
afiection, and that nothing would content the Commons, but 
pulhng down the church." 

This disafiection must have proceeded to some consider- 
able extent, even to something like free-thinking, if a notable 

* Dan, iv. 17. 

f Burnet, History of Reformation, L 149. CoUier's Eccles. Hist. iv. 
131. 8vo. edit 



20 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

speech, recorded by Herbert, may be taken as an indication 
of what was passing in thoughtful minds; "Because the 
chief business of man's hfe," says this unnamed member of 
the Commons, " is to inquire into the means of being happy 
forever, it is fit he should not resign himself to chance, but 
carefully compute upon the qualities and conduct of his 
spiritual guides Every man may collect the more essen- 
tial and demonstrative parts of his own religion, and lay 
them by themselves. Neither ought he to be overruled in 
his freedom by the discountenance of any other persuasion. 
Having thus exerted his reason, and implored the assistance 
of the Supreme Being, his next business will be to find out 
what inward means Providence has furnished for a test of 
truth and falsehood. . . . Clear universal truths should be 
first ascertained ; they will never check the progress of our 
faith, nor weaken the authority of the church. So that 
whether the eastern or the western Christians, whether my 
lord of Rochester or Luther, whether Eccius or Zuinglius, 
Erasmus or Melancthon, are in the right, we of the laity 
shall suffer nothing by the disagreement."* A sign truly, 
was such language as this, of a coming change. Super- 
stitions were relaxing their grasp ; a new era was about to 
dawn upon the prostrate rehgion and liberty of man. For 
once, the church was verily in danger ; it was the distant 
flash of the approaching storm. Once more parliament pro- 
hibited all suits to the court of Rome for dispensations on 
non-residence and pluralities, and this time not without effect. 
It is the first successful blow at the papal supremacy in 
England. 

The time is come for its overthrow. Another power, as 
much opposed to hberty of conscience, will gather up the 
fragments, and, having fashioned them anew, rule for centu- 
ries more in the temple of God. Cromwell's services to 

* CoUier, iv. 132-184. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 21 

Wolsey are nearly at an end, and he must seek another mas- 
ter. Not an unfaithful servant, nor wanting in diligence, he 
had not failed to profit in the service of ambition, chicanery, 
and intrigue. He has a secret of state-craft worth commu- 
nicating ; to no one more valuable than to Henry, now styled 
by papal grace, " Defender of the Faith." ..." And, foras- 
much, as now his majesty had to do with the pope, his great 
enemy, there was in all England none so apt for the king's 
purpose, which could say or do more in that matter, than 
could Thomas Cromwell." The necessity of the case puts 
the king's hatred of this " apt" man in abeyance ; and an 
interview, the germ of many future things, is had in the 
king's "garden at Westminster, which was about the year 
of our Lord 1530." 

After his " most loyal obeisance, doing duty to the king," 
Cromwell proceeds to make especially " manifest unto his 
highness, how his princely authority was abused, within his 
o^yn realm, by the pope and his clergy ; who, being swoni 
unto him, were afterwards dispensed the same, and sworn 
anew unto the pope, so that he was. as but half king, and 
they but half his subjects, in his own land ; which was de- 
rogatory to his crown, and utterly prejudicial to the common 
laws of his realm. Declaring therefore how his majesty 
might accumulate to himself great riches, so much as all the 
clergy in his realm was worth, if it so pleased him to take 
the occasion now offered." Advice this, admirably adapted 
to be " right well liked" by the royal listener ; nor was the 
occasion suffered to pass without its due and profitable im- 
provement.* 

With the parliament of 1531, just previous to which this 
memorable interview took place, the clergy also assembled in 
convocation. The first subject laid before them was Henry's 
divorce, which was quickly despatched, the clergy seeming 

* Fox's Acts and Monuments, ii. 1076. edit. 1610. 



22 • STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

satisfied that the marriage was unlawful. A far more 
weighty question, one that touched their spiritual gains and 
immunities, remained behind. At the close of the year pre- 
ceding, an indictment had been brought into the king's bench 
against the clergy of England, for breaking the statutes 
against provisors. A little while before, and cardinal Wol- 
sey had fallen beneath the penalties of a premunire for ille^ 
gaily exercising his legatine authority ; now, all who had 
appeared in his courts, or who in any way had acknowledged 
his unconstitutional power, were involved in his guilt, and its 
consequent forfeiture.* The king is but ** following the vein" 
of Cromwell's counsel ; nor is he slow in availing himself of 
the aid of his counsellor. 

By whom can the rising wrath of the astonished clergy, at 
this bold invasion of their time-sanctioned immunities and 
jurisdiction, be sooner calmed, than by the man whose sug- 
gestions threatened to evoke a storm of hierarchical indigna- 
tion, before whose blast princes and potentates had often fled 
away ? Shall ecclesiastical power and assumption again rise 
superior to royal and parliamentary control ? Will the new 
ropes be again broken like a thread from off the armsf of this 

" Giant of mighty bone, and bold emprise ?" — Milton. 

Nay, its hour is come ! " Cromwell entering with the king's 
signet into the clergy-house, and then placing himself among 
the bishops, began to make his oration — Declaring unto them 
the authority of a king, and the office of subjects, and espe- 
cially the obedience of bishops and churchmen under public 
laws, necessarily, provided for the profit and quiet of the 
commonwealth. Which laws, notwithstanding, they had all 
transgressed and highly offended, in derogation of the king's 
royal estate, falling in the law of premunire, in that not only 
they had consented to the power legantine of the cardinal, 

* Burnet, i. 194. \ Judges xvi, 12. 



OP RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 23 

but also in that they had all sworn to the pope, contrary to 
the fealty of their sovereign lord and king; and therefore 
had forfeited to the king all their goods, chattels, lands, 
possessions, and whatsoever livings they had. The bishops 
hearing this, were not a little annoyed, and first began to 
excuse and deny the fact; but after that Cromwell had 
shown them the very copy of their oath, made to the pope 
at their consecration, and the matter was so plain that they 
could not deny it, they began to shrink and to fall to en- 
treaty, desiring respite to pause upon the matter."^' 

Resistance was in vain — popular feeling was against them 
— old attachments, the very superstitions on which they had 
fattened, now availed them nothing — eveiy compassionate 
emotion for their pitiable condition was swallowed up in the 
one absorbing idea of their rapacity and licentiousness ; — by 
the one they had exasperated the people, by the other loos- 
ened all sense of moral and religious obligation. Submission 
was the only course open to them, and to save their lands 
and livings, a grant, by way of composition, Avas proposed of 
some hundred and eighteen thousand pounds. " But now a 
question rose, compared with which, the entire substance of 
the whole body, their goods and chattels, their lands and 
hvings, were but like the drop of a bucket, or the small dust 
of the balance ; a question which was to affect not England 
alone, but Great Britain and Ireland, with all their depen- 
dencies in other quarters of the world, for many generations. 
The anticipated moment had now anived when it was con- 
venient to divulge that no subsidy would be accepted, unless 
his majesty were acknowledged in the petition or address as 
' Head of the Church.' "f 

The immediate concurrence of the clergy could not be ex- 
pected to this important and far-reaching measure. They 

* Fox's Acts and Mon. ii 1066. 
f Anderson, Annals, <fec. i. 292, 293. 



24 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

demurred as to the meaning of the words. Misunderstand- 
ings, they said, might arise in future years, of a phrase so 
general, and dangerous consequences would probably result. 
For three days, in secret conclave, they debated the matter^ 
with hot words and strife. To hasten their decision, further 
penalties were freely threatened by Lord Rochford, Crom- 
well, and others of the king's council. The sense of the 
house was at last called for by archbishop Warhara — the last 
of Catholic archbishops. Most were silent. He told them, 
" Silence implied consent." " Then we are all silent," was 
the reply. A more explicit resolution was ultimately agreed 
upon, the king was acknowledged to be '* Supreme Lord and 
Protector," and also, as far as is consistent with the laws of 
the gospel, "Supreme Head of the Church of England."* 

Yet were they extremely unwilling to acknowledge, to 
themselves or others, the true character of this fatal conces- 
sion. They avoided all recognition of the compulsory nature 
of the subsidy, so reluctantly granted to the king. It was 
only a benevolence or gratuity, an evidence of their gratitude, 
particularly for the king's book against Luther, his active 
suppression of heresies, and his gracious interference in 
checking the insults of the Lutheran party. As for their 
submission, it was "not only penned with a salvo, but 
thrown into a parenthesis, as if it came in only by the by." 
Any reference to the premunire, or to the legatine authority 
of Wolsey, their submission to which had prepared the way 
for this sore humiliation, was most carefully eschewed. Nine 
bishops, sixty-two abbots and priors, with eighty-four of the 
clergy of the province of Canterbury, carried this obnoxious 
measure.f 

The convocation at York, led by Tunstal, the bishop of 
Durham, the archbishopric being then vacant, 3delded not so 
soon to the king's demand. This prelate protests against the 

* Collier, iv. 1*78. f Ibid. iv. 179. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 25 

measure. He intimates that some heretics had already ques- 
tioned the jurisdiction of their ordinaries, and sought to 
escape the censures of the church, by appeahng to the sup- 
posed higher authority of the king. The words should be 
therefore more precise. They might mean that the long was 
supreme head in his dominions, under Christ, only in tempo- 
ral matters, which he would most wiUingly acknowledge; 
or they might be made to mean, that the king's lordship, by 
the laws of the gospel, related to both spirituals and tempo- 
rals, than which, nothing coidd be more contrary to the 
teaching of the Catholic church. To the former he would 
most cheerfully subscribe, but against the latter he must 
protest, and would enter his protest on the journals of the 
convocation. These views of the bishop met with a no less 
distinguished opponent than the king himself. " The bishop," 
says the royal polemic, " had proved our Saviour the head of 
the church, that he lodged the branches of his spiritual and 
temporal jurisdiction in different subjects, that he made a 
grant of the latter to princes, and that bishops were commis- 
sioned for the other. But then the text cited, to prove obe- 
dience due to princes, comprehends all persons, both clergy 
and laity, and no order of the hierarchy is exempted. It is 
ti-ue, you restrain this submission to temporal matters, but 
the scripture expressions are general and without reserve. 
For you do not stick to confess, that whatever power is 
necessary for the peace of civil society, is included in the 
chief magistrates' commission. From hence we infer, that 
the prince is authorized to animadvert upon those who out- 
rage religion, and are guilty of the breach of the divine pre- 
cepts. For certainly we are not bound to give our own 
laws a preference over those of God Almighty, nor punish 
the violation of the one, and connive at the other. All spir- 
itual things, therefore, in which liberty or property is con- 
cerned, are necessarily included in the prince's power. Our 

2 



26 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

Saviour himself had a sacerdotal character, and yet submit- 
ted to Pilate's jurisdiction. And St. Paul, though a priest 
of apostolical distinction, makes no scruple to say, * I stand 
at Caesar's judgment-seat, where I ought to be judged.' "* 

Such are the most important of the arguments advanced 
in this valuable document ; sufficient to evince the ignorance 
of the high parties engaged, of the true nature of the church 
of Christ. It also exhibits their unacquaintance with the 
Christian laws of liberty and of obedience ; by the one of 
which the church is free from secular control, and by the 
other bound to the observance of the statutes of the King 
of kings, to whom alone belongs the power and the right to 
punish all breaches of his precepts, in that community of 
which he is the rightful and only Head. It is the priest and 
the prince in conflict, for the exercise of an usurped power 
over the consciences and souls of men. But the star of 
princely power was in the ascendant, and York, in spite of 
some other similar protests, must bend, with Canterbury, to 
the yoke. 

The step thus successfully gained, did not however amount 
to the entire rejection of the papal authority ; it was not a 
complete, nor an irrevocable separation of the kingdom from 
the Roman obedience. A series of minor measures were 
necessary before the end could come. All hope of compro- 
mise with Rome was not yet abandoned, nor were the king's 
projects yet ripe for the full assertion of the nation's eccle- 
siastical independence. It was, however, a golden opportu- 
nity for the Commons to endeavor the destruction of the 
many oppressive burdens under which the people groaned — 
efforts which subserved the schemes of Henry, in his inter- 
course with the Romish see. 

At an early period of the parliamentary session of 1532, 
which began upon the 15th of January, the Commons pre- 

* Collier, Iv. 183. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 



27 



sented to the king an address, praying for reformation of the 
many grievances occasioned by the immunities and privileges 
of the clergy.* Though the supphcation was well received, 
two years elapsed before these grievances were entirely re- 
dressed. The people were, however, gratified that their 
complaints were at length listened to, and the hierarchy, 
with the pope, kept in awe. 

But the clergy deserved some recompense for their sub- 
mission to the supreme head of the church, constrained as it 
was. The abolition of the payment of annates, or first-fruits, 
a year's value of ecclesiastical benefices, demanded by the 
see of Rome, was their reward. The convocation resolved 
upon an address to their head concerning the matter ; to him 
not unwelcome. Was it not a practical acknowledgment of 
his supremacy ? " May it please the king's most noble 
grace," say they, " having tender compassion to the wealth 
of this his realm, which hath been so greatly extenuate and 
hindered by the payments of the said annates, and by other 
exactions and slights, by which the thesaure of this land hath 
been carried and conveyed beyond the mountains to the court 
of Rome, that the subjects of this realm be brought to great 
penury, and by necessity be forced to make their most hum- 
ble complaint for stopping and restraining the said annates, 
and other exactions and expilations, taking for indulgencies 
and dispensations, legacies and delegacies, and other feats, 

* Rapin, i. p. 795. " Unto the laymen, whom they have falsely robbed, 
and from which they have divided themselves, and made them a several 
kingdom of themselves, they leave the paying of toll, custom, tribute ; for 
unto all the charges of the realm will they not pay one mite ; and the 
finding of aU the poor, the repairing of the highways and bridges, the 
building and reparations of their abbies and cathedral churches, chapels, 
colleges ; for -which they send out their pardons daily by heaps, and 
gather a thousand pounds for every hundred that they bestow truly." 
Tyndale, Pract, of PreL Works, L 423. Many curious particulars are to 
be found of the " practices" of the clergy, in this remarkable production. 



28 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

which were too long to remember ; to cause the said unjust 
exactions of annates to cease, and to be foredoen forever, by 
acts of this his grace's high court of parhament."* It was 
calculated that upwards of two milhons and a half had passed 
from the country since the second year of Henry YII. ; on 
this account alone parliament was not backward to fulfil their 
desires. It was also an uprooting of one great branch of 
papal prerogative. They accordingly resolved that annates 
should cease to be levied, and that if his holiness would not 
accept a composition of five per cent, for his trouble in draw- 
ing up bulls, sealing them in lead, &c.,f he should be op- 
posed altogether in his demands. Should he attempt to en- 
force their payment by excommunications, interdict, or other 
censures, the clergy were to be at liberty to disregard them, 
and to perform the divine services *' of holy church, or any 
other thing necessary for the health of the souls of mankind 
as heretofore. "J 

Anti-papal principles must have been widely held, and 
alienation of feeling from Rome very prevalent among all 
classes of the people, that this provision against the papal 
ban should be made at the clergy's own request ! For thus 
runs their prayer — "Forasmuch as all good Christian men 
be more bound to obey God than any man, it may please the 
king's most noble grace to ordain in this present parliament, 
that then the obedience of him and the people be withdrawn 
from the see of Rome."§ Such a check to Romish exactions 
was too consonant with the desires of the king and nation to 

* Stiype's Memorial's, I. ii. 160, 8vo, edit, 

f " And as bishops pay for their bulls, even so do an infinite number 
of abbats in Chiistendome. And other abbats and priors send after the 
same ensample daily unto Rome, to purchase licence to wear a mitre and 
a cross, and gay ornaments, to be as glorious as the best." Tyndale, 
Works, i. 434. 

X Dodd's Ch. Hist. i. 236. Collier, iv. 187. 

§ Strype's Memor. I ii. 161 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 29 

allow any delay in granting their request ; yet with a pro- 
vision, that the king might confirm, or disannul the statute, 
or any part of it, within two years. In the following year, 
however, it became by the king's letters patent, the law of 
the land. And thus another link, and that no unimportant 
one, was broken, in the chain of the pope's supremacy. 

Gratifying as was this affair to the avarice of the clergy, it 
is manifestly but another step in furtherance of the king's 
designs. He was not indifferent to the favorable opportu- 
nity presented to him by the temper of the Commons, to 
proceed in his "advised" course. In all former periods, the 
sovereign had encountered a clergy sustained by popular re- 
ligious feeling, but that had been outraged by their rapacity 
and unrestrained license through a long series of years. The 
clergy now stood alone, to meet as they could the attack of 
a monarch whom the people regarded as their friend and 
savior. For "the Commons, being resolutely bent to hum- 
ble the clergy to the very groimd, remonstrated against them 
in several articles, which all terminate in this ; — that an inde- 
pendent power in the clergy to make laws, though entirely 
spiritual, was prejudicial to the civil magistrates, and deroga- 
tory to the royal prerogative.'"^ 

In the formation and execution of ecclesiastical laws, ex- 
empt from secular control, lay the great strength of the 
papal hierarchy. As between it and the state there was no 
difference of opinion upon the right of some party to impose 
fonns of behef, and to enjoin by a law, binding upon the 
conscience, whether assenting or dissenting, the profession 
of some religious faith, then called the Catholic faith. Thus 
the ground of conflict was narrowed to the question, whether 
the privilege of making laws to bind the conscience should 
vest in the church, or in the chief magistrate. This privi- 
lege the clergy had most disgracefully abused, if indeed it 

* Dodd, i. 238. 



30 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

can exist without abuse, and the European mind had arisen 
in revolt against it. But such was the very partial preva- 
lence of a purely religious purpose among the secular au- 
thorities in the various stages of the reformation, that it 
soon became evident that either party must fail of attaining 
its object, or of preserving its immunities, if left dependent 
on its own strength alone. Hence, the universal fusion of 
the regal with the popular power in every country where 
the reformation prevailed, the conflicts which arose between 
Rome and its hitherto dependent sovereigns, and the recog- 
nition by the reformers of the supremacy of the civil magis- 
trate in matters of faith ; — a supremacy as fatal to liberty of 
conscience as was that of Rome, though perhaps, on the 
whole, not so liable to perversion. Temporal interests, vary- 
ing in character and power, may clash or coalesce with the 
religious views of the secular authority, to the production of 
a more moderate and vacillating treatment of spiritual con- 
cerns. But to the attainment of the one object of ecclesias- 
tical rulers, the government of man's soul, all interests, of 
every kind, are made subservient, and it is carried out with 
a singleness of aim and purpose, not to be acquired by the 
state. To the secular arm, however, the reformers trusted 
for their superiority over Rome. That alone, they supposed, 
could or would assure the final triumph of the gospel. This 
union was fatal to their object, and jeopardized very early 
the existence of the reformed churches. Less than half a 
century witnessed the almost entire banishment of a pure and 
simple piety from the communities thus allied. 

The complaint of the Commons coincided with the views, 
and met with the entire acquiescence of the king. Full of 
alarm, the bishops and abbots returned distinct answers to 
every part of the complaint. The time for defiance was 
passed. Their independent action, their canonical authority, 
their right to consecrate and administer the sacraments, to 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 31 

censure erroneous opinions, and issue precepts concerning 
faith and morals, were in peril ; but they will not abandon 
them without a struggle. 

Had not the king sufficiently humbled them ? Had they 
not already submitted to a headship, questionable by scrip- 
ture and canon law ? What then will be their position, if 
they yield their prescript, and hitherto uncontrolled pri\'i- 
leges, into the hands of the civil magistrate ? 

Has the inanity of age, or the darkening shadow of their 
coming fate, paralyzed the uphfted arm, at which nations and 
mighty monarchs have often trembled, that words of per- 
suasion and entreaty must suffice to screen their feebleness ? 

Verily theu glory has waned ; it is ready to vanish away ; 
the magic spell of centuries is broken. 

Such pleas, however, as can be found, shall be employed. 
Humihty, a stranger to these priestly men, and flattery, not 
unknown to them, are heard once more to speak, perhaps 
somewhat mechanically, from priestly hps ; " After our most 
humble wise, with our most bounden duty of honor and 
reverence to your most excellent majesty, endued of God 
with most incomparable wisdom and goodness ; pleaseth it 
the same to understand that we, your orators, and daily 
bounden bedesmen, the ordinaries, have read and perused a 
certain supplication, which the Commons of your grace's most 
honorable parliament now assembled, have offered unto your 
highness, and by your command delivered to us, to make 
thereimto answer." And what, if they have fallen foul of 
the constitution, and made canons contradictory to the laws 
of the realm ; and passed ecclesiastical regulations Avithout 
the assent of the laity or the crown ; and trespassed some- 
what upon the royal prerogative ; and oppressed liberty and 
property, interdicting lands and estates ; and menaced with 
excommunication every breach of their spiritual injunctions. 
Is not their authority founded upon the holy scripture, and 



32 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

the resolutions of holy church ? — on grounds and principles 
unquestionable, proper to test and try the reasonableness of 
all other laws, both temporal and spiritual ? By this rule, 
therefore, they profess themselves willing to amend all that 
is amiss, and hope his highness will not be backward to alter 
such laws of the state as deviate from the inspired writings, 
or clash with the privileges of the church, so that harmony 
may prevail between both societies. 

Displeasure appears upon the brow of their supreme head. 
Their humihty and flattery are alike unavailing to move his 
determination, or to repress his scornful • refusal of their 
prayer. Their scribe, Gardiner, of late made bishop of 
Winchester, must even write a letter of excuse; "Did not 
his highness's book against Luther concede the legislative 
authority of the clergy in matters spiritual ? But he hopes 
his majesty will excuse his mistakes, and ignorance of the 
strength of those proofs his majesty can produce. Still, 
bishops have their authority by divine right, nor can it be 
resigned to the secular magistrate ; such a surrender would 
be dangerous both to giver and receiver." His wriggling 
apology is offered in vain, the king is inexorable. A strange 
and unusual sight is this. Since St. Ambrose bowed the 
stubbornness of an emperor, bishops and abbots have not 
been wont to be thus treated by kings. Day after day, the 
upper house of convocation is agitated, and in great commo- 
tion with the anxious debate. " The defects and reserva- 
tions in the answer," are at last thought too perplexing to 
be removed or amended by episcopal acumen, and the lower 
house must nov/ try its hand. 

The king's " most humble chaplains are sorry that the 
answer of the clergy" does not please, nor satisfy " his high- 
ness;" and for his "better contentation in that behalf," they 
do now more specially reply. 

All Christian princes, say they, have hitherto recognized 



OF RELIGIOrS LIBERTY. 33 

themselves bound to suffer the prelates to exercise their 
authority, in making laws in matters concerning faith and 
good manners, necessary to the soul's health ; nor have they 
required the prelates to seek their consent or license. The 
spiritual jurisdiction of the clergy "proceeds immediately 
from God, and from no power or consent authorizable of any 
secular prince." Moreover, it ''is right well founded in 
many places of holy scripture," as in his highness's book 
against Luther, " with most vehement and inexpugnable rea- 
sons and authorities," is proved, Notwithstanding, ^'we 
your most humble chaplains and bedesmen, considering your 
high wisdom, great learning, and infinite goodness towards 
us and the church, and having special trust in the same, and 
not minding to fall into contention or disputations with your 
highness, — promise — -that in all laws we shall hereafter make 
by the reason of our spiritual jurisdiction and judicial power, 
we shall not publish, nor put them forth, except first we re- 
quire your highness to give your consent and authority unto 
them ; — except such as shall concern the maintenance of the 
faith and good manners in Christ's church, and such as shall 
be for the reformation and correction of sin, after the com- 
mandments of Almighty God, according unto such laws of 
the church, and laudable customs as have been heretofore 
made." And for the rest, such laws as are contrary to the 
prerogative and statutes of the realm, shall be "right gladly" 
revoked. 

Will not this pacify the king ? No. There is too much 
ambiguity and subterfuge in it. Their fawning humility and 
ill-disguised sense of weakness, excite his arrogance and 
cupidity. His claims become more urgent and exorbitant. 
They are required to sign a form of submission prepared by 
himself, that not only shall all new laws have his approval 
and royal assent previous to their promulgation, but also that 
all the old constitutions shall be revised by a mixed commis- 

2^ 



34 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

sion of the laity and clergy, appointed by liimself, and such 
as they please be abrogated and annulled. And now per- 
plexities thicken around them. They are in the hunter's 
toils, and there is no escape. Is there no experienced pilot 
at hand, to steer them safely through the breakers, foaming 
on every side ? Let that fast friend of the Catholic faith, 
bishop Fisher, of Rochester, advise them, and all may yet be 
well. " And to wait for this prelate's resolution, they ad- 
journ for three days."'* 

Such a step bodes not well for the king's designs : it must 
be prevented. The speaker and twelve of the Commons* 
house are sent for, and to them the sovereign thus addresses 
himself: "Well, beloved subjects, we had thought the clergy 
of our realm had been our subjects wholly ; but now we have 
well perceived that they be but half our subjects. For all 
the prelates at their consecration, make an oath to the pope 
clean contrary to the oath that they make unto us, so that 
they seem to be his subjects and not ours." — " And so the 
king delivering to them the copy of both the oaths, required 
them to invent some order that he might not be thus deluded 
of his spiritual subjects."! The appearance of the plague 
alone prevented some grave parliamentary censure ; for on 
this account the house rose in three days after this message 
of the king. Yet it was not without its effect. The first 
part of the king's demands the clergy will now accede to, if 
the promise might be binding for his life only ; but in the old 
canons they can permit no change. 

The king's determination is, however, unaltered ; and a 
new form of submission is sent them. But to this the pre- 
lates object, and then venture upon a positive refusal. The 
lower house of convocation, more apprehensive of the royal 
wrath, at last submit ; and the prelates also, with only one 

* Collier, iv. 189-199. 

f Fox, Acts and Mon. ii. 961. Burnet, i. 225. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 35 

exception, finally agree, without any limitation whatever, not 
to enact, promulge, or put in use any new canons, without 
the royal permission.* If the king obtained not all that he 
desired, sufl&cient was gained to lay the whole body of the 
clergy at his feet. A little more time must pass, and all will 
be granted to the sovereign that his ambition or rapacity may 
instigate him to demand. Hitherto, no reformed doctrine had 
been admitted among the clergy. 'No change of religious 
faith had occurred. As Catholics they had submitted to a 
Catholic king, anxious only to preserve their livings, lands, 
and wealth ; not dreaming that all would soon be in the 
grasp of the monarch, to whom they now yielded up their 
cherished independence, and for which act of spoliation they 
had themselves prepared the way. 

The royal supremacy over the clergy was by no means 
suffered to sleep. One priest was imprisoned for upholding 
the papal authority. Another, charged with Lutheranism 
and thrown into prison by the archbishop of Canterbur}^, was 
immediately released on appealing to the king as supreme 
head. It now only remained to give these concessions of the 
clergy the force of public law, and for the commonalty to 
approve the exercise of this novel power. At present, it 
suited not with Henry's great cause at the court of Rome 
wholly to throw off the authority of that see ; but everything 
was gradually prepared to effect it. Early in 1533. the par- 
hament passed an act against all appeals to Rome in testa- 
mentary and matrimonial causes, and on the rights of tithes 
and oblations. In the following language they set forth the 
reasons for this fresh inroad upon papal usages : •' That the 
kingdom of England is an empire provided with persons, both 
spiritual and temporal, well qualified to determine all contro- 
versies arising in it, without application to any foreign princes 
or potentates. And more particularly that part of the said 

* Collier, iv. 199. 



S6 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

body, called the spirituality, or the English church, have al- 
ways been esteemed, and found upon trial, sufficiently fur- 
nished with skill and integrity to determine all such doubts, 
and to administer all such offices and duties," as appertain to 
their spiritual station.* 

In the early part of this year, Granmer was consecrated to 
the see of Canterbury, which had been vacant since August, 
1532. For this purpose Henry procured bulls from Rome; 
and so anxious was Cranmer to exhibit his entire approval 
of the course adopted towards the clergy, that he refused to 
accept them but from the king's own hand. Nor would he 
take the usual oath to the pope, without first protesting 
against those parts of it which he conceived might be a bar 
to the performance of his duty to God, the king, and his 
country. By this expedient, unworthy of an honorable mind, 
he entered on his high functions as the first archbishop of 
Canterbury, recognizing in spirituals the supremacy of the 
king. The subserviency he here displayed marked his whole 
career ; on all occasions he evinced a remarkable readiness to 
do and to say all that could be pleasing to his royal master. 
He was immediately instructed, to declare the marriage of 
Henry with Katharine null and void, in conformity with the 
decision of convocation, and to pronounce on the legitimacy 
of the king's union with Anne Boleyn, some months after the 
nuptials had been 'solemnized. f Negotiations were kept up 
at Rome during the remainder of the year, until the decision 
of the pope (March 21st, 1534,) put an end to the entire 
procedure. An immediate separation from his new queen, 
and the restoration of Katharine to all her conjugal rights, 
were the terms of the papal decree.J 

It does not appear that these proceedings at Rome at all 

* Burnet, i. 232. Collier, iv. 201. 

f Strype's Cranmer, pp. 26, 29, 8vo. edit. 

X Short, Ch. Hist. p. 92. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 37 

accelerated the complete establishment of the royal suprem- 
acy ; although they may have conduced to that utter exclu- 
sion of the pope from every kind of influence in the internal 
spiritual affairs of the kingdom, which so quickly followed 
the settlement of this great question by the parliament then 
assembled. This exclusion was owing, for the most part, to 
the nature of those principles on which the king's ecclesias- 
tical authority was based, rather than to any purpose of the 
sovereign, the clergy, or the nation, to bring it to pass. 

But while the pope was thus busily engaged at Rome, in 
rendering irrevocable the humihation of his power in this 
country, the houses of parliament, which assembled on the 
15th of January, 1534, completed the work so auspiciously 
begun in former sessions. The king's council had in the pre- 
vious month, but after the revocation of Cranmer's sentence 
of divorce by the pontifif, entered on the consideration of 
various questions relating to the pope's "usurped power," as 
it was called, " within the realm ;" and measures were re- 
solved upon for the support of the royal prerogative.* 

The statutes relating to heresy, were the first to be singled 
out by the Commons for amendment. The inquisitorial 
power of the bishops' courts was destroyed ; all proceedings 
were to take place in open court, and by witnesses. Those 
adjudged guilty were not to suffer death until the king's writ, 
De heretico comburendo, had been obtained ; but none were 
to be troubled upon any of the pope's canons or laws.f They 
next proceeded to the submission of the clergy, who had ac- 
knowledged, "according to the truth," that their convoca- 
tions ought to assemble only by the king's writ, and had 
promised never to attempt the promulgation or execution of 
any canons without the royal assent to the same. 

This submission the parliament enacted for a law, and thus 
extinguished the independent power of the clergy forever. 

* Strype, Memor. I. i. 231. f Burnet, I 270. 



38 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

All appeals to Rome were prohibited, and the monasteries 
put under the jurisdiction of the crown. The payment of 
annates was wholly forbidden ; the procuring of bulls, briefs, 
or palls from the see of Rome denounced ; every kind of pay- 
ment formerly made under the names of pensions, censes, 
Peter-pence, dispensations, licenses, &c. "&c., interdicted; the 
manner of the election of bishops determined to be thereafter 
by a conge d'elire from the king to the dean and chapter ; 
and, lastly, the succession to the crown was settled on the 
issue of queen Anne.* 

In the session at the close of the year all these acts were 
confirmed ; the separation from Rome was completed, by 
the full recognition of the king, *'as the supreme head in 
earth of the church in England," and to his spiritual juris- 
diction all heresies and abuses were referred. It was made 
treason to deny the king this title, as also the once calling 
him heretic, schismatic, infidel, or usurper of the crown.f 

In the interval of the two sessions, commissioners were 
sent through the land to offer the oath of submission to the 
clergy, in which was included a declaration that the king was 
head of the church ; that the bishop of Rome had no more 
power than any other bishop ; and that in their sermons they 
would not pervert the scripture, but preach Christ and his 
gospel sincerely, according to the scripture, and the tradition 
of orthodox and catholic doctors. Bishop Fisher and Sir 
Thomas More refused the oath, and forfeited their lives for 
resisting the royal power. J 

Thus was consummated the abolition of the papal power in 
this country, and the formation of that' regal prerogative in 
spirituals, as well as in temporals, which has continued to be 
an incubus upon the Anglican church to the present day. It 
is evident that in the procurement of this change, a sincere 
and profound conviction of the errors of Rome, and of the 

* Collier, iv. 234-241. f Burnet, i. 288. X Bm-net, i. 284. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 39 

value of a scriptural faith and piety, bad not the least share. 
The welfare of the church of Christ', the recognition of his 
claims as the King of saints, the emancipation of the human 
mind from the bondage of superstition, and the attainment 
of liberty of thought and freedom of conscience, formed no 
part of the object of the actors in this revolutionary drama. 

" To this crisis the king of England had driven on . . . for 
with regard to the separation of this country from Rome, it 
has already been demonstrated, that Henry the Eighth had 
no credit whatever. At the moment * he meant not so,' nei- 
ther did he in his heart so intend. Could he only have 
moulded the pontiff to his will, no such event would have 
happened during his administration ; and had Clement not 
been under the control of the emperor, Henry would have 
been an adherent still ; as in opinion, if he had any opinions, 
he remained to the end of his life."* 

The whole nation seems to have been content with the 
change. During the session of parliament in which it was 
effected, care was taken, that from Sunday to Sunday, at St. 
Paul's Cross, the usurpation of the pope in exercising juris- 
diction within the realm, should be proclaimed to be as con- 
trary to God's laws as it was to the rights of princes. 

Divines were employed to write on the king's behalf ; and 
books on the supremacy were plentifully distributed in the 
land. Gardiner, Tunstal, and Bonner, made their zeal in the 
king's cause eminently to appear by their writings and ser- 
mons. " If you think," says the bishop of Durham to Regi- 
nald Pole, in 1536, " the hearts of the subjects of this realm, 
greatly offended with abolishing of the bishop of Rome's 
usurped authority in this realm, as if all the people, or most 
part of them, took the matter as ye do .... I do assure you, 
ye be deceived. For the people perceive right well what 
profit Cometh to the realm thereby ; and that all such money 

* Anderson's Annals, i. 406, 407. 



40 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

as before issued that way, now is kept within the realm 

So that, if at this day the king's grace would go about to re- 
new in his realm the said abolished authority of the bishop 
of Rome, I think he should find much more difficulty to bring 
it about in his parliament, and to induce his people to agree 
thereunto, than anything that ever he purposed in his parlia- 
ment, since his first reign."* 

One tyranny was thus exchanged for another. A new 
feature, likewise hostile to true Christian liberty, becomes 
noticeable in the history of the church ; and we now proceed 
to trace its characteristics as embraced and moulded by the 
teachers of reformation. 

It was of necessity that Henry should call to his councils, 
Cranmer, Cromwell, and Audley ; men tinged, to say the 
least, with the new learning. The position taken by the 
sovereign, could not be maintained upon any principle recog- 
nized as catholic ; nay, it was a position destructive of the 
main pillar of Roman orthodoxy. 

If the priestly order is by divine right the alone source and 
executive of spiritual jurisdiction, then by no proper title can 
it be claimed or exercised by any secular potentate ; the as- 
sumption of a controlling and legislative power over the 
clergy, stands in direct antagonism with it. 

The newly-acquired authority of Henry could find con- 
sistent supporters in the propagators of the new learning 
alone. From the commencement of the Reformation they 
had made the secular power their strength and shield. Nor 
was it long before it became distinctly visible to those who 
continued to adhere to the papacy, with all the fondness of old 
and early associations, that submission to the king involved 
an entire defection from the dogmas, as well as from the 
power of Rome. The acquisition of the supreme headship 
of the Anglican church, necessitated the introduction and par- 

* Burnet, Records, III. ii. No, 62. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 41 

tial toleration of the reformed doctrines, if only as a counter- 
poise to the claims of the pope ; and the king's reluctance to 
entertain Lutheran views must give way to that necessity. 
Gradually, but certainly, every consistent Romanist will be 
obliged to place himself in opposition to the royal prerogative ; 
and as certainly will England, if determined to maintain that 
exclusive privilege, be thrown into the bosom of the reforma- 
tion. Cranmer, during his residence abroad, as ambassador, 
had mingled much in the society of the leading continental 
reformers, having, indeed, married the niece of Osiander. 
From them he had imbibed the doctrine of secular interference 
in ]-eligious affairs ; and on his elevation to the archiepiscopal 
see of Canterbury, he proceeded to introduce changes in the 
doctrine and discipline of the Anglican church, so far as the 
king's prejudices and policy would allow. 

During the progress of the events already related, God's 
word had been spreading, somewhat rapidly, among the 
people. In 1526, the newly-translated Testament of Tyndale 
was in general circulation, awakening the fears and fiery 
wrath of Wolsey, Warham, and Tunstal. By the year 1534, 
not less than twelve editions of the New Testament were being 
perused throughout the land, besides some other portions of 
the lively oracles of truth. ^ The laws against heretics were 
not, however, put into execution with any severity, until, 
on the disgrace of Wolsey, Sir Thomas More became lord 
chancellor. It seems singular, that a man who in his Utopia 
had allowed of no persecution for religious tenets, should be 
thus blinded to " the partial advantage of that liberty," which 
in theory he had advocated.f In conjunction with Archbishop 
Warham and Tunstal, this eminent man, and persecutor, 
issued a warning against several heretical books in the English 
tongue that had been lately introduced, especially informing 

* Anderson's Annals, ii. Index. 
t Burnet, i 292. Short, p. 95. 



42 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

the people, that the king did well in not permitting the scrip- 
tures to be set out in the vulgar tongue."^ 

Great numbers of persons were brought before the bishops* 
courts, and compelled to abjure; and were oftentimes con- 
demned to a public penance of flogging, bearing fagots and 
wax candles, in the white garb of penitents. It was their 
crime that they were ''very expert in the gospels, and all 
other things belonging to divine service ;" that they refused 
to go on pilgrimage, or to fast on saints' days, saying that 
salvation could not be obtained by good deeds; that "on 
Sunday then last past, in sacring time, they held down their 
heads and would not looli upon the sacrament ;" that they 
were heard to say, that it booted not to pray to images ; that 
the *' sacrament of the altar was not, as it was pretended, the 
flesh, blood, and bone of Christ ;" and especially, that they 
possessed the gospels and the psalter in English, the sum of 
scripture, and a variety of other books containing " pestilent 
and other horrible heresies." A few were burnt, as Thomas 
Hitton, for bringing in books from abroad ; Thomas Bilney, 
for preaching against images, pilgrimages, and prayers to 
saints; Byfield and Tewksbury, as relapsed heretics. The 
most eminent was John Frith, the friend and companion 
of Tyndale. He combated successfully Sir Thomas More 
on the real presence ; his reply to his learned antago- 
nist was written while in confinement, and deprived of his 
books. f 

These severities did not stay the progress of the truth, for 
the time was come, when, even in high places, the whole 
circle of Roman doctrines and ceremonies must be reviewed ; 
and with the pope's supremacy, his dogmas, and discipline, 
be abandoned. The extirpation of the pontifical authority, 
and with it the rule of the canon law, threw the judgment of 
heresy upon its discordance with scripture ; and by royal 

» Burnet, i. 294. \ Fox, Acts and Mon. 897, 898, 910, 934, 941. 



I 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 43 

command, this became the standard of decision. Moreover, 
the necessities of the king's affairs abroad, constrained him 
to solicit the assistance of the foreign reformers, and of the 
princes by whom they were protected, in order to strengthen 
himself against the emperor, the nephew of his divorced 
queen, to whom was committed the execution of the pope's 
adverse decree."^ 

Now also, the encouragement shown by queen Anne, aided 
materially the extension of divine truth at home ; and for a 
time, a greater liberty to preach and distribute the word of 
God prevailed. By her influence Latimer and Shaxton, both 
deeply imbued with the reformed doctrine, were advanced to 
bishoprics, and it is more than doubtful, whether Cranmer, 
without their help, would have dared to proceed in the path of 
reformation. The first use which had been made of his 
authority by this timid and obsequious prelate, was to issue, 
in conjunction with Gardiner, Stokesley, and Longland, an in- 
hibition against preaching, unless permitted by a new license. 
To this was appended an order, "that no preachers for a 
year shall preach, neither with nor against purgatory, honor- 
ing of saints, that priests may have wives, that faith only 
justifietli, to go on pilgrimages, to forge miracles, considering 
these things have caused dissension, "f 

Under the fostering care of the royal prerogative, the year 
1535 was chiefly occupied in preparing the way for the disso- 
lution of the monasteries : the other portion of the " well- 
liked" advice of Cromwell to his sovereign in 1529. For this 
purpose Cromwell was named Vicegerent, the General Visitor 
of all monasteries and privileged places, with authority also 
to visit every archbishop and bishop of the kingdom. By the 
year 1540, their suppression was complete, and the king and 
his courtiers revelling in the spoils. Some few new bishoprics 

* Burnet, i. 313. Collier, iv. 290. 
\ Craumer's Works, L 98 ; iv. 253. Jenkyn's edit 



44 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

were founded, tlie royal exchequer was replenished, and the 
greatest hindrances to the advance of the Reformation were 
moved out of the way.* 

But the king's proceedings towards the bishops exhibited the 
boldest exercise of his supremacy that had yet occurred. 
On the 18th of September, he issued an order to the arch- 
bishops of Canterbury and York, suspending the ordinary 
jurisdiction of the whole hierarchy, until the general visitation 
of the clergy, he had recently set on foot, should be finished. 
It appears that this novel exercise of the prerogative was 
expected to call forth expressions of episcopal discontent ; for 
six days after we find Legh and Ap Rice, two of the Vice- 
gerent's delegates, urging their master to persist in the 
suspension. They say, that the bishops' jurisdiction is re- 
ceived, either by the law of God, by the bishop of Rome's 
authority, or else by the king's grace's permission. If by the 
first, let them bring forth scripture to prove it; if by the 
second, "let them exercise [it] still, if they think it meet f^ or 
if by the last, wherefore should they be grieved if the king 
recall that which came from him ? "It seems to us good that 
they should be driven by this means to agnize their author, 
spring, and fountain, as else they be too ingrate to enjoy it. 
Let them sue for it again by supplication, that they and all 
other may understand him to be the head-power within this 

* Collier, iv. 294. l^urnet, i. 331, 346. " These means he (Cromwell) 
used. He first found means to persuade the king that it might lawfully 
be done ; that for his crown and state in safety it was necessary to he 
done, for that he made appear to the king how by their means the pope 
and clergy had so great authority, revenue, alliance, and principally cap- 
tivity of the souls, and obedience of subjects, that they were able to put 
kings in hazard at their will ; that for his revenue and maintenance of 
his estate, wars, and affairs, both in peace and in war, at home and 
abroad, with others, it was most profitable to dissolve them for augmen- 
tation of his treasure," Contemporary MS. in Letters relating to the 
Suppression of the Monasteries, Camden Society, p. 112. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 45 

realm under God ; and that no jurisdiction proceedeth within 
the same, but from him."^ 

The suspension was not removed, until thus compelled they 
"sued with words of prayer" for the restoration of their 
episcopal functions. Their prayer was granted, to be enjoyed 
during the royal pleasure only, and attended with the follow- 
ing extraordinary declaration : — That as his vicegerent, Crom- 
well, was so fully occupied with the arduous duties committed 
to his charge, and fearing lest injuiy should accrue thereby 
to his subjects, the supreme head on earth of the Anglican 
church, therefore, empowered the bishops in his stead, to con- 
fer orders, to institute and to collate to benefices, and to 
exercise other branches of episcopal jurisdiction, " beside and 
beyond those things which are divinely committed to their 
charge by the holy scriptures. "f 

To this humiliation all the bishops quietly submitted, 
excepting only Gardiner who was abroad, apparently content 
to derive their ofiSce, as ministers of the gospel, from the civil 
magistrate ; thereby virtually disclaiming the authority of the 
Lord Jesus Christ to set teachers in his church, and at the 
same time overthrowing the rights of the Christian communify. 
The vicegerent's commissioners diligently carried out the in- 
structions of their master, as is seen by the following letter to 
their employer : — " Right worshipful sir, my duty presup- 
posed, this is to advertise you that Master Doctor Layton and 
I, the 11th day of January (1536), were with the archbishop 
of York, whom we, according to your pleasure and precepts, 
have visited, enjoining him to preach and teach the word of 
God, according to his bound duty, to his cure committed unto 
him ; and to see others here in his jurisdiction, being endued 
with good quahties, having any respect either to God, good- 
ness, virtue or godliness, to perform the same ; enjoining, more- 
over, to him, to bring up unto you his first, second, and third 

* Strype, Memor. I. ii 216, 217. f Collier, ix, 156. Short, p. 104. 



46 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

foundations whereupon he enjoyeth his office and prerogative 
power, with the grants, privileges, and concessions, given to 
him, and to his see appertaining."* 

The whole hierarchy was now at the king's command ; a 
despotic power was fully accorded him over body and soul. 
His subjects await the next utterance of their sovereign with 
anxiety and suspense; for he will immediately proceed to 
determine what they must believe. Their consciences must be 
for him a tabula rasa ; a plastic, formless clay, ready to re- 
ceive whatever form of doctrine the royal potter may think fit 
to frame. What is it to him that there is one Lord and one 
Lawgiver, the Everlasting Word, whose voice alone can speak 
into life, and illuminate the soul of man with the rays of 
truth ? Is he not the only reflector of that bright image, 
and by divine right the only promulgator of eternal verities, 
within this his land ? 

Is it not treason to believe otherwise than as the head of the 
body politic ? He deems it, therefore, to be his especial duty 
to take into his care the well-being of the souls with the 
bodies of his people. 

The murder of Anne Boleyn was consummated ; a spiritless 
parliament and a time-serving prelate had sanctioned the 
bloody deed ; the one by reversing the law of succession, and 
Cranmer by annulling the marriage of his protectress and 
friend, as she stood in mockery of justice at his tribunal ; 
when, on Friday, the 9th of June, the new convocation 
assembled. *' Therein, the Lord Cromwell, prime secretary, 
sat in state above all the bishops as the king's vicar or vice- 
regent-general in all spiritual matters. "f 

The convocation is opened with a Latin sermon from 
Latymer, in obedience to " the commandment of our primate." 
With great fidelity and boldness, the preacher sets before 

* Dr. Legh to Cromwell, Letters relating to Suppression, &c. p. 95. 
f Fuller, Ch. Hist. Book v. Sect. 26. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 47 

them their high duties as the stewards of Christ, though he 
fears many of them are children of darkness. He declaims, 
with pointed severity, against the general topics handled in 
their discourses to the people : — " Your care," he exclaims," is 
not that all men may hear God's word, but all your care is, 
that no layman do read it ; surely, being afraid lest they by 
their reading should understand it, and understanding learn to 
rebuke our slothfulness. What have ye done hitherto, I pray 
you, these seven years and more ? What one thing that the 
people of England hath been the better of a hair ; or you 
yourselves, either more accepted before God, or better dis- 
charged toward the people committed to your care ? Is it 
unknown, think you, how both ye and your curates were, in a 
manner, by violence enforced to let books to be made, not by 
you, but by profane and lay persons ; to let them, I say, be 
sold abroad, and read for the instruction of the people?" In 
a similar strain, he rebukes their cruel and persecuting spirit ; 
their worldliness, their frauds, and deceptions practised on a 
foohsh people, exhorting them to a reformation of their 
worship, to take away images and relics, to purify the bishops' 
courts, and to reduce the number of holidays.* 

This startling and ominous discourse gave note of that which 
was about to follow. The first act of convocation, was to 
sign publicly an instrument, presented by Cromwell, relating 
to the nullity of the king's marriage with Anne Boleyn. 
" Oh ! the operation of the purge of a premunire, so lately 
taken by the clergy, and a hundred thousand pounds paid 
thereupon ! How did the remembrance thereof still work 
upon their spirits, and make them meek and mortified ! — They 
knew the temper of the king, and had read the text. The 
lion hath roared, who will not fear ? Amos iii. 8."f 

And now the important object of their assembling was 

* Latymer's Sermons, pp. 33-58, Parker Society edit. 
f Fuller, Book v. Sect. 26. 



48 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

brought forward. On Friday, July 23rd, the prolocutor of 
the lower house laid before the prelates a collection of sixty- 
seven erroneous doctrines, which, to the great grief of the 
clergy, were publicly preached, printed, and professed, " and 
are either the tenets of the old Lollards, or the new reformers, 
together with the anabaptists' opinions."* Here are some 
of them. " That all ceremonies accustomed in the church, 
which are not clearly expressed in scripture, must be taken 
away, because they are men's inventions : the church is the 
congregation of good men only : that it is as lawful to christen 
a child in a tub of water at home, or in a ditch by the way, 
as in a font-stone in the church : it is sufficient for a man or 
woman to make their confession to God alone : that it is not 
necessary or profitable to have any church or chapel to pray 
in, or to do any divine service in : that saints are not to be 
invoked or honored: that prayers, suffrages, fastings, or 
alms-deeds, do not help to take away sin : that by preaching 
the people have been brought in opinion and behef, that 
nothing is to be beheved, except it can be proved expressly by 
scripture : that it is preached and taught, that, forasmuch as 
Christ hath shed his blood for us, and redeemed us, we need 
not to do anything at all but to believe and repent, if we have 
offended : that no human constitutions, or laws, do bind any 
Christian man, but such as be in the gospels, Paul's epistles, 
or the New Testament, and that a man may break them with- 
out any offence at all." These opinions were the fruit of 
freedom of thought, and of a sole regard to the testimony of 
holy writ. We shall presently see that they did not in the 
least harmonize with the views of either party, into which the 
convocation was divided, nor with the determination of him 
by whom their faith is about to be settled — for the present.f 
It is the king's study, says his noble representative, day 
and night, to set a quietness in the church ; nay, he cannot 

* Burnet, i. 388. f Fuller, book v. sect. 28. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 49 

rest till these controversies be fully debated and ended. A 
very special desire moves him to ^' set a stay for the un- 
learned people, whose consciences are in doubt what they 
may believe." But, well as the king is acquainted with these 
controversies, and able by his excellent learning to determine 
upon them, yet his great love to the clergy prompts him to 
lay the matter before them. He desires " you lovingly and 
friendly to dispute among yourselves, and conclude all things 
by the word of God, without all brawling and scolding." 
But he will not suffer scripture to be wrested, nor defaced, 
by any glosses, or papistical laws, or decrees of fathers and 
councils. " And his majesty will give you high thanks, if 
ye will sit and conclude a perfect unity." 

After " this godly exhortation, of so worthy a prince," for 
which the bishops all rise up together to give thanks, they 
proceed to disputation. The thorny questions of the nature 
and number of the sacraments are their topics. Rome and 
Wittenburg produce their arguments, in the persons of op- 
posing prelates. " Oh what tugging was here," says Fuller, 
" betwixt these opposite sides, whilst with all earnestness 
they thought to advance their several designs." "Let us 
grant," submits the bishop of London, " that the sacraments 
may be gathered out of the word of God, yet are you far de- 
ceived, if you think there is none other word of God, but that 
which every sowter and cobler do read in their mother tongue. 
And if ye think, that nothing pertaineth unto the Ohristiaii 
faith, but that only which is written in the Bible, then err ye 
plainly with the Lutherans. . . . Now when the right noble 
Lord Cromwell, the archbishop, with the other bishops, 
which did defend the pure doctrine of the gospel, heard this, 
they smiled a little one upon another, forasmuch as they saw 
him flee, even in the very beginning of the disputation, into 
his old rusty sophistry and unwritten verities."* But what 

* Fox, p. 3, 1080. 
3 



60 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

■unity can be " set and concluded," when it is found that 
seven against seven the antagonists stand, and each side im- 
movable ? while a nation's faith, the obedience of myriads of 
consciences, must hang balanced in the scale — if it may. 

A faith is however ready and at hand — at which these 
episcopal warriors will not venture to tilt. Unity can be 
"set and concluded," though bishops may fail to effect it; 
there is one, at least, bold enough to attempt it. ** Articles 
concerning^ our faith, and laudable ceremonies in the church 
of Christ" — a " twiHght religion" — may be framed, to which 
the consciences of the people, both cleric and lay, can and 
must obediently conform, and that by " Henry the Eighth, 
by the grace of God, King of England, and of France, De- 
fender of the Faith, Lord of Ireland, and in Earth Supreme 
Head of the Church of England."* "For," saith he, "it 
most chiefly belongeth unto our charge, diligently to foresee, 
and cause that not only the most holy word and command- 
ments of God should most sincerely be believed, and most 
reverently be observed, and kept of our subjects; but also 
that unity and concord in opinions, namely, in such things as 
do concern our religion, may increase and go forward, and all 
occasion of dissent and discord touching the same be re- 
pressed and utterly extinguished." Such is the introduction 
to the articles, which after several disputations were assented 
to, and signed by the convocation, and then published for the 
souls' health of the community. 

In the first, they are taught that the entire canon of the 
Bible, which, at that time, included the apocrypha, as also 
the Apostles', the Nicene, and Athanasian creeds, are "the 
most certain and infallible words of God," which ought and 
must be most reverently observed and religiously kept, else 
were they " infidels, heretics, and members of the devil, with 
whom they shall be perpetually damned." In the second, 

* Titla to Book of Articles, tlien publiehed. Fuller, book v. sect, 84, 86. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 61 

that of necessity they must and ought to beheve, that bap- 
tism ordained by our Saviour, is to be given to all men, as 
also to infants, that thereby all sin, original and actual, may 
be washed away, and that " all the Anabaptists' or Pelagians' 
opinions in this behalf, ought to be reputed for detestable 
heresies, and utterly to be condemned." In the third, that 
penance is a sacrament appointed by Christ, and that without 
it, and "such good works of the same," no one shall obtain 
everlasting life, neither remission nor mitigation of present 
pains and afflictions in this hfe. In the fourth, that in the 
sacrament of the altar, the very flesh and blood of Christ is 
really and substantially present. In the fifth, that sinners 
are justified "by contrition and faith, joined with charity:" 
not as deserving to attain the said justification, but through 
the merits of the blood and passion of Jesus Christ. Next 
follow articles concerning the ceremonies to be used. Images 
are to be employed as " representors of virtue and good ex- 
ample :" the images of Christ and our Lady to kindle, and 
stir men's minds to recollection and lamentation of their sins. 
Saints are to be honored as the elect persons of Christ, who 
passed in godly life out of this transitory world, to whom we 
may laudably pray, and their holy days observe, except so 
far as they may be mitigated and moderated by the com- 
mandment " of us the supreme head." Holy vestments, the 
giving of holy bread, the sprinkling of holy water, bearing 
of candles on Candlemas-day, giving ashes on Ash Wednes- 
day, bearing palms on Palm Sunday, creeping to the cross 
on Good Friday, and kissing it, setting up the sepulture of 
Christ, the hallowing of the font, and other exorcisms, cus- 
toms, and benedictions, are not to be contemned, but used 
and continued. And lastly, prayers and masses are to be of- 
fered for souls departed, though it "be to us uncertain by 
scripture," where they are.* 

* Fuller, book v. sect. 34, 35. Burnet, L ii 467. Add. L i 890. 



62 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

Such was the commencement of the doctrinal refonnation 
of the church of England, and the first example of the exer- 
cise of the royal prerogative in the imposition of dogmas of 
faith on the consciences of people. *' For good instruction 
must they be taken" until such time as his majesty shall 
change or abrogate any of them.* Neither priest, bishop, 
nor king, seems to have thought of the impracticability of 
the work they took in hand, or of the iniquitous presumption 
of the endeavor to command and control the conscience. 
Nay, with a condescension amounting to mockery, the people 
are exhorted in "charitable unity and loving concord," to 
observe the same, as thereby they will " not a little encourage 
us to take farther travails, pains, and labors, for your com- 
modities in all such other matters, as in time to come, may 
happen to occur, and as it shall be most to the honor of God, 
the profit, tranquillity, and quietness of all you, our most 
loving subjects." 

May we not fairly suspect that none of these parties knew 
the power of true godliness to excite a most tender and sen- 
sitive regard to every, even the least, commandment of Jesus 
Christ ? That such regard would lead its possessor through 
*' floods and flames" to obey them ? Surely their only con- 
ception of religion must have been that of a system of spirit- 
ual tyranny over the souls of men, as the source of wealth 
and power. The clergy, indeed, murmured at the authority 
assumed; but they knew the temper of Henry too well to 
off'er any open resistance. Although their mass-money, their 
lucrative indulgencies, their shrined wealth, were at stake, a 
premunire might again pluck them of their gains, and the 
coffers of their sovereign be once more weighty with their 
gold, should tljey dare to oppose his will. The convocation 
completed its labors with a petition to the king, " that he 
would graciously indulge unto his subjects of the laity, the 

* Strype's Cranmer, p. 690. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 53 

reading of the Bible in the English tongue, — and that a new 
translation might be forthwith made for that end and pur- 
pose." Their petition eighteen months before had not suc- 
ceeded. Nor was this regarded ; for although in the ensuing 
year a reprint of Tyndale's own translation, under another's 
name, was ushered into the world under royal auspices, it 
was without the consent of the clergy, and to their very 
great vexation.^ 

The people were by no means pleased with the freedom so 
boldly taken with their faith. A general discontent, breaking 
out into open rebellion, soon displayed itself, which was with 
difficulty quelled. Yet in marvellous blindness they acknowl- 
edged the sovereign to be their supreme head under God, 
for the settlement of their religious behef.f The articles 
alluded to above, were in the following year embodied in the 
book entitled, ''The Institution of a Christian Man." Many 
additions were made to them, during the preparation of the 
work, by a number of bishops, and other learned men, who 
were appointed by the king to this weighty charge. It was 
not, however, easily achieved ; so numerous were the objec- 
tions of the partisans of the old learning. *' Yerily for my 
part," says Latymer, " I liad lever be poor parson of poor 
Kynton again, than to continue thus bishop of Worcester."! 
Here is the principle on which this reformed faith was im- 
posed on the people : "It appertains to Christian kings and 
princes, in the discharge of their duty to God, to reform and 
reduce again the laws to their old limits, and pristine state of 
their power and jurisdiction, which was given them by Christ, 
and used in the primitive church. For it is out of all doubt 
that Christ's faith was then most firm and pure, and the 
scriptures of God were then best understood. And therefore 
the customs and ordinances then used and made, must needs 

* Anderson, Annals, L 548, 578. -j- Burnet, i 413. 

\ Quoted in Cranmer's Works, i 188. 



54 STRUGGLFJS AND TRIUMPHS 

be more conform, and agreeable unto the true doctrine of 
Christ, and more conducing to the edifying and benefit of the 
church of Christ, than any customs or laws used or made 
since that time."'* Thus another rule of faith, one established 
by the prince and his church, was introduced into the place 
of the word of God. 

For more than ten years, the sacred volume had found an 
entrance into the land, although forbidden, and its suppression 
earnestly sought. Until now, none in authority cared for 
these things, when by the wonderful providence of God the 
labors of the martyr of Vilvorde were crowned with success. 
Twenty-five editions of the New Testament at least, and four 
of the whole Bible, had been distributed, bearing fruit unto 
eternal life, ere it was allowed by the king's grace to be 
bought and read in his realm.f The law of man and the law 
of God were now brought into conflict for the sovereignty of 
the soul : not without an assured victory to the latter, though 
it must win its way through tears, imprisonment, and blood. 
At the door of every man's conscience the combatants stood, 
the wisdom of God and the wisdom of man. A struggle was 
inevitable ; it has been long and severe : our own day has yet 
to witness its close. 

By royal permission and command, a Bible was ordered to 
be set up in every church, and none hindered in its perusal; 
for " it is the true lively word of God, which every Christian 
ought to believe, embrace, and follow, if he expects to be 
saved." But the people must beware of their own judgment. 
Let them not contest with each other the sense of difficult 
places, but refer themselves to men of better judgment, to 
the scribes and rabbis of the church.J Does the vicegerent, 
Cromwell, think, while he issues this injunction, that he can 
control the operations of the Spirit of God, whose living word 

* Strype's Cranmer, p. XT'?. f Anderson's Annals, l 579. ii App. 

X Burnet, i 453. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 55 

he thus places before the eyes and understandings of the 
people ? or that those consciences in which the Spirit of truth 
shall speak with power, are amenable to his judgment? It 
is to be feared, that he who thus opened the sealed waters 
of life to thirsty souls, was himself a stranger to the grace 
of God, and that nothing but a low and worldly policy led 
him to an act so fertile in blessing to his country and the 
world. 

But as if to illustrate tlffe degree of liberty which the people 
were to be permitted to enjoy, the king himself engaged in 
the examination of Lambert for heresy. " A more miserable 
spectacle of a royal tyrant taunting and worrying his victim, 
Westminster Hall probably never witnessed before nor since." 
At this sad scene, Cromwell and Cranraer assisted, in con- 
junction with Gardiner; the first of them delivering without 
repugnance the sentence which consigned the martyr to the 
flames.* Other victims also were sought out to exhibit the 
fidelity of the sovereign to the catholic faith, but which he had 
unwittingly brought to the very verge of destruction. Cran- 
mer again comes before us a persecutor. To him, with some 
others, including Robert Barnes, a martyr in the reign of 
Mary, was issued a commission signed by Cromwell, to seek 
out and try a certain people, " lurking secretly in divers 
corners and places," whose sentiments on baptism were not 
in harmony with the articles, recently set forth, to produce 
unity and contentation ; who, moreover, ventured " to con- 
temn and despise, of their own private wills and appetites," 
the laudable rites and ceremonies of his grace's church. They 
had committed treason in daring to think differently from the 
king, and for this they were to be pursued to death, even, if 
need be, in a manner contrary/ to the due course of laiu ! Tliree 
men and a woman, with fagots bound on their backs, did 
penance for the crime at St. Paul's Cross, and one man and 

* Anderson's Annals, ii 19. Collier, iv, 436. 



56 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

a woman of the same sect and country were burnt in Smith- 
field.* 

The leaders of the catholic party had been recovering their 
influence with Henry for some time past, " when Gardiner, 
Tunstal, and other bishops, zealous for the old religion, put 
the king upon such methods, as dashed all the present hopes 
of the other party. "f The tide of reformation began thus 
early to ebb. The royal power, which had hitherto opened 
channels for its flow, was now, and for the rest of Henry's 
days, to be employed in forming*^dykes against its further 
progress. It was to be clearly manifest that " it was not hy 
might, nor hy power, hut hy the Spirit of the Lord of Ifosts," 
that the flood of divine truth was to pour its salutary streams 
into the souls of the people. Symptoms of the repaired 
strength of the old party had been shown in the prosecutions 
which had taken place in various parts of Kent, of '* fautors 
of the new learning, as they call it," which the influence of 
Cranmer, even in his own diocese, and sustained by the vice- 
gerent's power, could not prevent.J But this change was 
most fully exhibited, when, in the parliament of 1539, the act 
of six articles was affirmed to be the law of belief to the king's 
subjects for the future. 

The disagreement of the hierarchy on the doctrines to be 
enforced, afforded another opportunity for the royal polemic 
to exhibit his theological, as well as his regal power. For 
" in his own princely person," he vouchsafed " to descend and 
come into his said high court of parliament and council, and 
there like a prince of most high prudence, and no less 
learning, opened and declared many things of high learning 
and great knowledge, touching the said articles, matters, and 
questions, for our unity to be had in the same."§ So the 

* Collier, ix. 161, iv. 486. Anderson, ii. 18. Strype's Cranmer, p. 686. 
f Dodd's Ch. Hist. i. 305. Tierney's ed. X Cranmer's works, i. 242. 
§ Preamble to the Act, in Dodd. i. p. 444. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 57 

people must believe, or profess to believe, 1. That in tbe 
holy sacrament of the altar, under the form of bread and 
wine, is present really the natural body and blood of our 
Saviour. 2, That communion in both kinds is not necessary 
to salvation. 3. That priests may not marry. 4. That vows 
of chastity are according to the law of God. 5. As is also 
the mass. 6. And that auricular confession is necessary for 
the church of God.* The blessed effects of union, and the 
mischiefs of discord, could, however, be evinced and cured 
only by the fagot and the stake, to which the venturous 
being was to be consigned, who dared to deny the truth of 
the first article. He who denied the rest, was to be impris- 
oned during pleasure, and, if obstinate and hardy in his 
opposition, hanging should put an end to every conscientious 
scruple. 

The bishops proceeded with alacrity to employ the powers 
intrusted to them, " Great perturbation," says our martyr- 
ologist, " followed in all parishes almost through London," 
and five hundred persons were soon immured in fetid dun- 
geons for their faith. ISTo wonder it was complained of as a 
great hardship against conscience. " Men do not love to be 
dragged into religion; to be under the necessity of being 
either a martyr or an hypocrite, they thought singular 
usage. "f But "the godly study, pain, and travail of his 
majesty, was undergone for the conservation of the church 
and congregation in a true, and sincere, and uniform doctrine 
of Christ's religion." Ought not therefore every loyal subject 
to accept the results of such self-imposed and disinterested 
toil ? Could any motives but of the purest kind have influ- 
enced the sovereign in this kindly regard for the spiritual weal 
of his people? "This measure," we are told, "very much 
quieted the bigots, who were now persuaded that the king 
would not set up heresy, since he passed so severe an act 

* Preamble to Act, in Dodd i. p. 444. f Collier, v. 48 



68 STRUGGLES AND TRIULIPHS 

against it, a7id it made the total suppression of the monasteries 
go the more easily through''^ The pocket and the conscience 
of the king were always nearly allied to each other; and 
probably he thought those of his subjects were so too. 

The royal interference did not, however, reach to the pre- 
vention of the perusal of the word of God. Often were the 
church services interrupted by the loud voice of some reader, 
more lettered than his fellows, as, surrounded in the porch by 
Hstening crowds, he broke to the joyful and expecting throng 
the bread of life. Everywhere might be heard the eager con- 
versation of minds, enlightened by the truth, speaking of 
those wonderful words which the Most High had spoken unto 
men; the street, the tavern, the ale-house, the church, 
and every company, were the scenes of earnest dispute, or 
holy zeal. Scripture was compared with scripture, and its 
sense closely scrutinized. The night of superstition retired 
before the morning dawn, and the " sacraments of holy 
church" were threatened with subversion and overthrow; 
some even had ventured to whisper thoughts which appeared 
to destroy " the power and authority of princes and magis- 
trates.'" It was time, therefore, that that power should vin- 
dicate its divine original, and remedy, by " most excellent 
wisdom," all irregularities and diversities of opinion, that by 
reducing the people to unity of judgment, there might be an 
increase of love and charity among them. For this purpose, 
his majesty issued a proclamation at the commencement of 
the session. His people must cease such disorderly practices. 
Nevertheless, his highness is content, ".that such as can and 
will read in the English tongue, shall and may quietly and 
reverently read the Bible and New Testament by themselves 
secretly, at all times and places, convenient for their own 
instruction and edification, to increase thereby godliness and 
virtuous living." Only let them not attempt to understand 

^ Burnet, L 471. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 69 

difficult places, without the assistance of the learned ; and 
moreover, " his majesty was not, nor is, compelled by God's 
word to set forth the scripture in English to his lay subjects ; 
but, of his own liberality and o-oodness, was and is pleased 
that his said loving subjects should have and read the same in 
convenient places and times, to the only intent to bring them 
from their old ignorance and blindness to virtuous living 
and godliness, to God's glory and honor, and not to make 
and take occasion of dissension and tumult, by reason of 
the same. Wherefore his majesty chargeth and command- 
eth all his said subjects to use the holy scripture in 
English, according to his godly purpose and gracious intent, 
as they would avoid his most high displeasure and indigna- 
tion."^ 

Thus did Henry strive to realize, in the omnipotency of 
his power, his supreme headship over the consciences of his 
subjects, and to restrain by his permission the all-conquering 
progress of the sacred word. They had read, and would con- 
tinue to read, with or without his sanction, the holy page ; 
notwithstanding that he may say by proclamations to the 
flood of heavenly truth, "Hitherto shalt thou come; hut no 
further^ 

But few other events will require our notice in the present 
reign. The most important was the publication, in 1543. of 
"The Erudition of a Christian Man." The issue of this work 
closed the labors of a commission of bishops, appointed three 
years before by the king, to fix the rule of religious belief. 
The influence of the catholic party in this also prevailed, and 
put back still further the reformation of the national faith. 
The people were commanded to " order" their lives by 
this book, the doctrine of it " having been seen and liked 
very well by both houses of parliament." It contained 
everything needful for the attainment of everlasting life. 

* DodA i 310, 451. 



60 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

They were no longer to busy *' their heads and senses" about 
free-will, justification, good works, &c. ; all these things were 
here fully and most certainly explained for their perfect con- 
tentation. 

Moreover, they were instructed, " that the reading of the 
Old and New Testament is not so necessary for all those 
folks, that of duty they ought, and be bound to read it ; but 
as the prince and the poHcy of the realm shall think conve- 
nient to be tolerated or taken from it."^ This same parlia- 
ment, which so well liked the new creed set forth by the 
king's authority, for the advancement of true religion, com- 
manded that all Bibles and Testaments of Tyndale's transla- 
tion, should be utterly extinguished and abolished, and all 
annotations and preambles be blotted out from all others. ISTo 
women, except gentlewomen, no artificers, no journeymen, no 
husbandmen, nor laborers, were to read the Bible to them- 
selves, nor to any other, privately or openly, on pain of a 
month's incarceration in prison.f 

Such were the fetters and restrictions under which the 
nation was to learn the divine truths of Scripture. Nor must 
we be surprised that these were sanctioned and promoted by 
Cranmer, since he beheved that all civil and ecclesiastical 
power had the same origin ; that to the Christian prince was 
committed, immediately from God, not only the administration 
of things political, and civil governance, " but also the admin- 
istration of God's word for the cure of souls." He thought 
that the election of the pastors of the church, should be " by 
the laws and orders of kings and princes. "J Hence the sim- 
plest act of worship must be a matter of royal regulation ; a 
prayer, in the people's tongue, may not rise from any hps in 
the public assemblies to the great Father and Fountain of 
mercy, until it shall please the sovereign to permit. The 

* Strype, Mem. I. i. 586. f Burnet, i. 584. 

J Cranmer's Remauas, ii. 101. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 61 

very matter of the preacher's sermon must be, and was, deter- 
mined for him ; and every truth, even the most precious to the 
soul's salvation, must give way to the frequent inculcation of 
the profane dogma of the king's supremacy ; that must never 
be forgotten. 

If souls were awakened into life ; if any found their way 
to the Lamb of God, through the thick mists of superstition 
which hid him from their view ; if a gem of heavenly truth 
glimmered in the surrounding darkness, from the brow of one 
made free by the Spirit of God, it was not the fault of princes 
and bishops if the soul thus blessed did not ascend to the 
regions of bliss in the lurid glare of the martyr-pile, or from 
the filthy and pestilential dungeon. Guided by nO conscien- 
tious motive, or true religious sense themselves, they could 
not understand nor would they suffer any other to possess, 
that of which they were so painfully deficient. Soul, mind, 
thought, everything which elevates man to his Creator, to- 
gether with the secular interests of humanity, must be subject 
to a domination fatal to their welfare, their expansion, their 
freedom, and their life. 

We may close this portion of our sketch with the following 
accurate picture of the state of this, so-called, reformation, 
from the pen of an eye-witness. " Still remaineth their foul 
masses, of all abominations the principal ; their prodigious 
sacrifices, their censings of idols, their boyish processions, 
their uncommanded worshippings, and their confessions in the 
ear, of all traitory the fountain ; with many other strange ob- 
servations, which the scripture of God kiioweth not. Nothing 
is brought as yet to Christ's clear institution and sincere or- 
dinance, but all remaineth still as the antichrists left it. No- 
thing is tried by God's word, but by the ancient authority of 

fathers : now passeth all under their title If it were 

naught afore, I think it is now much worse ; for now are they 
become ' laudable ceremonies,' whereas before time they were 



62 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

but ceremonies alone. !N'ow are tliey become necessary rites, 
godly constitutions, seemly usages, and civil ordinances, where- 
as before they had no such names ; and he that disobeyeth 
them, shall not only be judged a felon, and worthy to be 
hanged, by their new forged laws, but also condemned for a 
traitor against the king. To put this, with such like, in ex- 
ecution, the bishops have authority, every month in the year 
if they list, to call a session, to hang and burn at their 
pleasure. And this is ratified and confirmed by act of par- 
liament, to stand the more in effect."* 

The king himself corroborates all this, though in more 
courtly phrase, in his speech to his last parliament. The 
close of his reign was at hand, though he knew it not ; and 
from the lips of the sovereign we receive a confession of the 
utter futility of all his attempts to control the conscience, to 
fix the faith of his liege subjects, or to establish that unity 
and concord which had ever been pleaded, as the sufficient 
reason for his interference. " Behold, then," he says, " what 
love and charity is amongst you, when the one calletli the other 
heretic and anabaptist, and he calleth him again papist, 
hypocrite, and pharisee. ... I see and hear daily, that you of 
the clergy preach one against another, teach one contrary to 
another, inveigh one against another, without charity or dis- 
cretion. Some be too stiff in their old mumpsimus, others 
be too busy and curious in their new sumpsimus. Thus all 
men almost be in variety, in discord, and few or none do 
preach, truly and sincerely, the word of God according as 
they ought to do. . . . You of the temporality be not clean and 
unspotted of malice and envy ; for you rail on bishops, speak 
slanderously of priests, and rebuke and taunt preachers. . . . 
And although you be permitted to read holy scripture, and to 
have the word of God in your mother tongue, you must under- 
stand, that it is licensed you so to do, only to inform your own 

* John Bale, quoted in Strype'g Cranmer, p. 186. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 63 

conscience, and to instruct your children and family, and not 
to dispute, and make scripture a railing and a vaunting-stock 
against priests and preachers, as many light persons do. I 
am very sorry to know and hear how unreverently that most 
precious jewel, the word of God, is disputed, rhymed, sung, 
and jangled, in every alehouse and tavern, contrary to the 
true meaning and doctrine of the same ; and yet I am even 
as much sorry, that the readers of the same follow it in 
doing so faintly and coldly. For of this I am sure, that 
charity was never so faint amongst you, and virtuous and godly 
living was never less used, nor was God himself amongst 
Christians never less reverenced, honored and served.'"^ 

His failure to rule the conscience was complete. Honors, 
wealth, and power, had induced many to applaud and follow 
their sovereign in his revolutionary proceedings, and multi- 
tudes witli him had bowed in worship, and sacrificed their 
souls, at the golden shrine of mammon ; but others received 
the reward of their fidehty to God in stripes, bonds, and death. 
The soul eluded his grasp ; it escaped his toils. There were 
those whom the Son had made free indeed, who dared to taste 
and handle the holy truths of the oracles of God, apart from, 
and uncontaminated by, the doctrines of men, however erudite 
and necessary to elucidate heaven's laws they were proclaim- 
ed to be, by this usurper of Christ's prerogative ; of these we 
shall presently speak. 

* Dodd. I App. 454, 455. 



64 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 



SECTIOiN 11. 



EDWARD VI. 



When the youthful Edward ascended the throne, in 1547, 
but little more had been effected in the way of reformation 
than an entire separation of the English church from the 
Roman obedience. Many corruptions and abuses had been 
moderated or destroyed, but the national faith and discipline 
remained essentially catholic. It may be said, indeed, that 
but one of the various doctrines which were regarded as pecu- 
liarly protestant, had obtained any ascendency at all ; a doc- 
trine too consonant to the pride and ambition of sovereigns, 
to be allowed to remain in abeyance by the tyrannical and un- 
scrupulous Henry. Everywhere among the reformers, the 
right of the Christian magistrate to rule the conscience as well 
as the body of the subject, was asserted ; and while them- 
selves exercising their lately-acquired Hberty to the fullest ex- 
tent, they regarded with jealousy and bitter hatred all who 
ventured, while copying their example, to depart from their 
standard of truth. " Whether the omnipotence of the state 
be or be not a Christian or protestant principle, this is at any 
rate the form that protestantism then assumed most distinctly 
in England. Political and worldly interests soon gained an 
entire preponderance over all questions of religion and of 
truth ; with whatever sincerity the latter may have been 
pleaded at the beginning of the movement."* This vicious 
principle distorted the fairer features of the reformation from 

* Heber's English Universities, edit, by F. W. Newman, i. 269. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 65 

its very birth, and has been productive of untold mischiefs to 
the present hour. The doctrines, the ceremonies, the services 
of the AngHcan church, were not founded on a conscientious 
conviction of their necessity to salvation, or of their harmony 
with the divine mind uttered in the oracles of truth. Neither 
were they the spring blossomings of an internal and renewed 
life, bursting forth into forms expressive of its vigor, its pu- 
rity, and its heavenly origin. On the contrary, they were 
imposed upon an unwilling people, and but little, if any, im- 
provement took place in the general character and religious 
feelings of the mass. Whatever of true piety was actually 
existent was not the fruit of these changes ; neither did it 
spring from the holy seed of the gospel sown and cherished by 
regal power. The unsanctioned, discountenanced, and per- 
secuted efforts of men in lowly life, whose hearts the Lord 
had opened, alone issued in the planting of the tree of liberty 
and truth. 

With the above principle as the basis of their proceedings, 
Somerset the protector, Cranmer, and others forming the in- 
fluential portion of the young king's council, commenced their 
alterations in the national faith. They labored to erect a 
church which should retain in mental slavery, and under 
religious bondage, a people among whom the emancipating 
truths of scripture were yet freely to circulate ; thus insuring 
a state of unceasing conflict. The Christian community was 
to be kept in a perpetual childhood, ever to remain under the 
thraldom of tutors and governors. On the day of the youth- 
ful sovereign's coronation, the archbishop solemnly reminded 
him, " That being God's vicegerent, and Christ's vicar in his 
own dominions, he was obliged to follow the precedent of 
Josias, to take care the worship of God was under due regu- 
lations, to suppress idolatry, remove images, and discharge the 
tyranny of the bishop of Rome."* These " due regulations" 

* ColHer, v, 182. 



66 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

were quickly supplied by the primate's zeal. A series of in- 
junctions relating to every part of public worship, public in- 
struction, and private devotion, were furnished to certain 
visitors appointed to proceed through the length and breadth 
of the land, that idolatry and superstition might be suppress- 
ed, the true religion planted, and all hypocrisy, enormities, and 
abuses extirpated."* 

The publication of a volume of homilies, to be read to their 
flocks by those ministers who could not preach, soon followed, 
in which for the first time the important doctrine of justifica- 
tion by faith alone, was clearly enunciated by state authority. 
To Cranmer that part of the book is attributed. f Latymer 
thus amusingly informs his sovereign how his homiletic instruc- 
tions were received among his people: **Some call them 
komelies, and indeed so they may be called, for they are 
homely handled. For though the priest read them never so 
well, yet if the parish like them not, there is such a talking 
and babbling in the church, that nothing can be heard ; and 
if the parish be good, and the priest naught, he will so hack 
it, and chop it, that it were as good for them to be without 
it, for any word that shall be understood. And yet (the 
more pity) this is suffered of your grace's bishops, in their 
dioceses, unpunished. But I will be a suitor to your grace, 
that ye will give your bishops charge ere they go home, upon 
their allegiance, to look better to their flock, and to see your 
majesty's injunctions better kept, and send your visitors in 
their tails, and if they be found negligent and faulty in their 
duties, out with them. I require it, in God's behalf, make 
them quondams, all the pack of them. "J Such was the in- 
formation and advice given by Latymer, himself a quondam 
bishop, to the youthful monarch, in the "preaching place," 
in the king's garden at Westminster, the very place where, 

* Documentary Annals, i. 4, (fee, f Cranmer's Remains, ii. 138. 
:(: Latymer's Sermons, pp. 121, 122. Parker Soc. edit. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 67 

thirteen years before, Cromwell had advised his sovereign to 
a course, of which the above was the fruit. 

The mental activity of the people could not, however, be 
confined to the channels hewn out for it. Curious questions 
were passed about as to the nature of the mystery in the 
sacrament of the altar, which they were called upon to receive 
with an unreasoning faith. Even "unseemly and ungodly 
words" were uttered, by which " the holy body and blood of 
the Lord" were depraved and reviled. Was it indeed his 
" blessed body there, head, legs, arms, toes, and nails ?" 
Could it be broken, or chewed in the mouths of the faithful, 
or was he always swallowed whole ? Did they drink the 
very blood that flowed from his side, or that which remained 
in the lifeless, crucified form of the buried Saviour ? And many 
other speeches, alike irreverent, were made on this profound 
mystery. *' For reformation whereof, the king's highness, by 
advice of the lord protector, and other his majesty's council, 
straitly willeth and commandeth, that no man, nor person, 
from henceforth, do in anywise contentiously and openly argue, 
dispute, reason, preach, or teach, than be expressly taught in 
the holy scripture ; — imtil such time as the king's majesty 
shall declare, and set forth, an open doctrine thereof, for he 
shall incur the king's high indignation, and suffer imprison- 
ment, or be otherwise grievously punished."* 

The " private mind and fantasy" of many persons outran the 
wishes of even Cranmer himself, though in some measure 
sanctioned by him. The non-observance of many of the 
laudable ceremonies of Henry's imposition, called forth, in less 
than two months, another proclamation to restrain their zeal. 
It was pronounced rash and seditious for any to preach in any 
open and unlicensed place, without royal or episcopal permis- 
sion, especially since the people were persuaded by private 

* Doc. Annals, Proclamation, Dec. 2tth, 1547, vol. I 26. 



68 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

curates, preachers, and other laymen, not to observe the old 
and accustomed rites and formahties."* 

The parliament also added its quota to the general progress. 
The statute of the six articles was repealed, which opened the 
way for the return of many who had gone abroad, fearing its 
cruel threatenings, among whom may be mentioned John 
Hooper and Miles Coverdale. The communion was command- 
ed to be administered in both kinds, private masses abolished, 
and bishops in future were to be appointed by the royal letters 
patent alone. A further gift of all unsuppressed chantries, 
and of legacies given for obits and lamps in churches, was be- 
stowed upon the king, to the profit of his many hungry 
courtiers.f 

Many of the old superstitions were by this means rooted 
up, but without any general increase of true piety or even 
morality. This " dissolution of life," says Becon, a reformer 
and actor in these times, " this impiety of manners, maketh 
the gospel of our salvation to be evil spoken of. How can it 
otherwise be ? For when they see an alteration in religion, 
and no alteration in manners, but a continuance in the old, or 
else a practice of much more ungodhness than heretofore 
hath been used, the adversaries of God's truth take easily an 
occasion to blaspheme the Christian doctrine."| Churches 
did not escape profanation ; frays, quarrels, blood-shedding, 
the passage of horses and mules through them, were fright- 
fully prevalent. " They were like a stable, or common inn, 
or rather a den and sink of all unchristness," says the 
proclamation by which these " evil demeanors" were for- 
bidden. § 

To this was added a prohibition of the exercise of the 
public ministry. The people had been fed with controversy, 

* Doc. Annals, i. 34. f 'Neal, i. 33, 84. 

X Bacon's Jewel of Joy, p. 416. Works, Parker Soc. edit. 
§ Strype's Cranmer, p. 251. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 69 

and with bitter disputes, it was said, instead of " the manna 
sent down from heaven." 

But few, therefore, were permitted to exercise the calling 
of God, being those only who were licensed by the king's 
council. It appeared fitting to the rulers of the nation's con- 
science to send the clergy for a space into retirement, " to 
apply themselves to prayer to Almighty God." The loving 
subjects of the sovereign, could in the meantime occupy them- 
selves with "due prayer in the church," although the service 
was still in Latin, " and in the patient hearing of the godly 
homilies," until one uniform order could be prepared for their 
use.* "What a system must that be, which recognizes in 
any human being a right to issue such an edict as this ; an 
edict so fearfully impious as to involve a counteraction, and 
that on no Umited scale, of God's wisest and most gracious 
designs ! But such is the system which the Reformation per- 
petuated in this country, and which has subsequently been 
maintained by means in perfect harmony with its antichristian 
character."! j 

As the clergy were unable to instruct the people by an 
exhibition of divine truth, derived from a knowledge of God's 
word, and an experience of its power, so were they equally 
impotent and unqualified to pour forth at the throne of grace 
acceptable prayer. 

With them, prayer could be nothing but a form, and that 
was now provided. Uniformity in divine worship was deemed 
a matter of the greatest moment. To effect this, every holy 
emotion of the heart must be suppressed, every aspiration of 
the heaven-born spirit hindered in its flight, and all commu- 
nion with the Father in heaven checked, but such as the 
book of Common Prayer now set forth, allowed. True it is, 
that legends, responds, commemorations, synodals, and the un- 

* Fuller, book I. sect. L c. 15, vol. ii. 314. edit, 1842. 
f Price, Hist, of Nonconf. I 76. 



70 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

certain stories of the Roman breviaries, had no place in this 
purgated edition of the missal ; but yet there were prayers 
for the dead, Mariolatry was tacitly sanctioned, baptismal 
regeneration taught, and the exorcism of the unclean spirit 
from the infant to be baptized, was commanded to the offici- 
ating priest.* 

"Here you have," say the compilers, in the preface, "an 
order for prayer (as touching the reading of holy scripture), 
much agreeable to the mind and purpose of the old fathers, 
and a great deal more profitable and commodious than that 
which of late was used. It is more profitable, because there 
are left out many things whereof some be untrue, some uncer- 
tain, some vain and superstitious ; and is ordained nothing to 
be read, but the very pure word of God, the holy scriptures, 
or that which is evidently grounded upon the same." In this 
the Apocrypha was included.^ 

The ceremonies to be used were at the same time deter- 
mined. In the exposition of their sentiments on this subject, 
it was declared by the compilers to be a great crime to neglect 
or break in upon the order of the church, and that private 
men ought not to presume to draw models or make such ar- 
rangements; it was the sole duty of the governors of the 
church. An exact uniformity of habits and ceremonies was 
insisted upon. The square cap and the surplice were so im- 
portant as to be retained at the risk of the reformation itself. 

* " I command thee, unclean spirit, in the name, <fec., that thou come 
out and depart from these infants, whom our Lord Jesus Christ hath 
vouchsafed to call to his holy baptism, to be made members of his body 
and of his holy congregation. Thou cursed spirit, remember thy sen- 
tence, remember thy judgment, remember the day to be at hand wherein 
thou shalt burn in fire everlasting, prepared for thee and thy angels. 
And presume not hereafter to exercise any tyranny towards these in- 
fants, whom Christ has bought with his precious blood, and by his holy 
baptism, calleth to be of his flock." King Edward's Liturgies, pp. 108» 
109 ; Parker Society's edit. f King Edward's Liturgies, p. 18. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. Yl 

Superstitious in their use, abused to idolatrous purposes as 
they had been, and conscientious as some were in the rejection 
of them, yet it was the pleasure of the rulers of the church 
to preserve them. 

" Our reformers split upon this rock, sacrificing the peace 
of the church to a mistaken necessity of an exact uniformity 
of doctrine and worship, in which it was impossible for all 
men to agree." jSTevertheless, in all this we are informed by 
the act of uniformity, which imposed the book upon the 
people, that the " archbishop of Canterbury, and certain of 
the most discreet and learned bishops, had as well an eye and 
respect to the most sincere and pure Christian religion taught 
by the scripture, as to the usages of the primitive church ;" 
and thus had made ** one convenient and meet order, rite, 
and fashion, of common and open prayer, and administra- 
tion of the sacraments ; . . . the which, at this time, hy aid of 
the Holy Ghost, with one uniform agreement is of them con- 
cluded."^ 

And now Cranmer and his associates in this work flatter 
themselves that the honor of God, and great quietness, will 
ensue by the compulsory use of a form thus divinely prepared ; 
as if at their command life would breathe its vital energy 
through this mechanism of piety. At all events, every other 
manifestation of spiritual life must be extinguished. He who 
ventures to " sing or say common prayer" after any other 
manner, or speak anything that may derogate from the 
excellence of the book, shall forfeit a year's income from his 
benefice, and be imprisoned for six months. For a second 
offence, he shall be deprived altogether of his promotions, 
and be imprisoned for a year. A pei'son having no prefer- 
ment, shall be incarcerated ; the first time for six months, the 
second during the remainder of his life. So solicitous indeed 
are they that due honor and respect should be paid to the 
* Neal, i. 37, edit. 18S7. 



72 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

work of their hands, that penalties are enacted for those who 
in " interludes, plays, songs, or rhymes, or by any other open 
words declare or speak" to the depravation or despising of 
the book.* Thus they enforced the motto so significantly 
adopted, and placed in " the border around the title page in 
black letter," Let every soul submit himself unto the authority 
of the higher powers. For there is no power but of God. The 
powers that he are ordained of God. Whosoever, therefore, 
resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God. 

Can it be supposed that a book so imperfect as in three 
years to require revision, so full of erroneous sentiments, and 
imposed with such cruel conditions, was indeed according to 
the mind of the Spirit of God ? Could this volume be the 
true exponent of the unutterable groanings which he oft 
raiseth in the hearts of God's children ? Was this persecuting 
edict a fit accompaniment to the confessions of sin, of human 
frailty and corruption, marked down in its pages as the meet 
language of priest and people, of king and subject, when in 
His presence who willeth not the death of a sinner? Or 
must we think that the difference of the human and divine is 
such, that the work of man requires for its recommendation 
and defence, an artillery of power which the word of God in 
its plenitude of might rejects? Surely the claim of infalli- 
bility involved in this assumption of sovereignty over con- I 
science, is ahke odious and profane, whether exercised by a 
king or by a pope. 

The reformation in this reign was completed by the pro- 
mulgation of a series of forty -two articles, which were to con- 
stitute the doctrinal belief of the church of England. These 
. vary but little from those afterwards adopted in the reign of 
Elizabeth, and which have ever since continued to be recog- 
nized as the standard of faith by the oaths and subscriptions 
of the Anglican clergy. Whether they have produced that 

* Dodd, ii. App. Ixxii. 



I 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 73 

unity in the faith, and rooted out " that discord of opinions," 
for -which they were intended, we need not inquire. Those 
who subscribe either beheve them to be true, or else they 
greatly prevaricate.* At all events, we know that their au- 
thoritative imposition has not quieted the scruples of tender 
consciences, nor silenced the utterances of some true-hearted 
men, whose faith has been drawn from another standard, 
which, in their weakness it may be, they have thought to 
be the only one — the volume of inspired truth. 

That persecutions should result from these proceedings, 
was inevitable. Violent efforts to burst open the doors of con- 
science, and to sit enthroned on that seat of Deity, as his 
vicegerent, cannot fail to awaken resistance or produce hy- 
pocrisy ; to advance true religion, they were worse than use- 
less. Therefore, " ambition and emulation among the nobili- 
ty, presumption and disobedience among the common people, 
grew so extravagant and insolent, that England seemed to be 
in a downright frenzy. The wise and good among the papists 
grew confirmed in their persuasion, that a corrupt church 
was better than no church at all." The sermons of the 
time give a frightful picture of the state of society. " AH 
men," says Hooper, in one of his discourses, " confess that 
sin never so abounded."! Gambhng, prostitution, separations 
of husbands from their wives, profane swearing, frauds in 
every trade, impunity of murder and theft, owing to the 
corruption of judges, and of every principle of justice, 
were the frequent topics of denunciation from the pulpits of 
the day. 

While bishops and legislators were settling creeds and 
forms of worship, the people were running madly to destruc- 
tion. The shackles of ancient superstitions were in part 
broken, their spells were well-nigh gone. No new form of 

* Burnet, iL 313. 

f Haweia's Sketches of the Reformation, pp. 142, 148. 
4 



74 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

spiritual belief had as yet taken their place, and bound the 
partially freed spiiit. Licentiousness even found a support in 
a perverted view of gospel truth. 

The martyr Ridley shall speak for us in a "Piteous Lamen- 
tation," when taking a retrospect of these times : " As for 
Latymer, Lever, Bradford, and Knox, their tongues were so 
sharp, they ripped in so deep in their galled backs, to have 
purged them, no doubt, of that filthy matter that was festered 
in their hearts, of insatiable covetousness, of filthy carnality and 
voluptuousness, of intolerable ambition and pride, of ungodly 
loathsomeness to hear poor men's causes, and to hear God's 
word, that these men of all other, these magistrates then 
could never abide. Other there were, very godly men, and 
well learned, that went about by the wholesome plasters of 
God's word, howbeit after a more soft manner of handling 
the matter ; but alas ! all sped in like. For all that could be 
done of all hands, their disease did not minish, but daily did 
increase. ... As for the common sort of other infeiior magis- 
trates, as judges of the laws, justices of the peace, sergeants, 
common lawyers, it may be truly said of them, as of the 
most part of the clergy, of curates, vicai-s, parsons, prebenda- 
ries, doctors of the law, archdeacons, deans, yea, and I may 
say, of bishops also, I fear me, for the most part, although I 
doubt not but God had, and hath ever, whom he in every 
state knew and knoweth to be his — but for the most part, I 
say, they were never persuaded in their hearts, but from the 
teeth forward, and for the king's sake, in the truth of God's 
•word ; and yet all these did dissemble, and bear a copy of a 
countenance, as if they had been sound within.'"^" Truly no 
very encouraging success for formularies of faith enjoined by 
royalty, for changes of religion supported by hope of gain, or 
fear of suffering. 

The reformers were not backward in recognizing, both in 

* Ridley's "Works, p. 59 ; Parker Society's edit 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 75 

theory and practice, the principle of persecution necessarily 
involved in the assumption of a regal right to determine the 
faith of the people. Prosecution was not an accident of the 
system which the protestant divines sought to establish. It 
was as much involved in their idea of th& might and majesty of 
kings, as rulers of the church and lawgivers to the consciences 
of their subjects, as in the pope's claim of supremacy over the 
soul, as the representative on earth of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
Both were hateful and blasphemous assumptions of a power be- 
longing to the Highest alone ; when exerted, it must persecute. 
For a hundred and fifty years, the church of England became 
a persecuting church, and for another equal period she strenu- 
ously maintained the test and corporation laws ; which, while 
in some measure they restrained her power, stamped with ob- 
loquy and degradation those whom she could no longer hurt 
or destroy. 

The act of parliament of 1534, by which the submission of 
the clergy to the royal supremacy was sanctioned, and enacted 
into law, provided that the various constitutions, canons, and 
synodical decrees, under which the church had been governed, 
should be revised by a commission of thirty-two persons, to 
be appointed by the king. Whatever canons they deemed 
worthy of preservation, were to be retained, the remainder 
abolished, "and made frustrate;" the royal consent being 
declared sufiBcient to give them the force of law. This act 
was renewed in 1536, and again in 1544. By the commis- 
sioners appointed under the last act, a body of ecclesiastical 
law was prepared, but the letter of ratification, though made 
out, never obtained the royal signature. Another ineffectual 
attempt to give it legal existence followed in 1550, when, 
under the immediate direction of Cranmer, assisted by Taylor, 
Haddon, and Peter Martyr, the compilation was perfected. 
Numerous corrections, in the handwriting of Cranmer and 
Martyr, may still be seen in a manuscript copy of the code. 



76 



STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 



preserved in the British Museum. The early death of 
Edward alone prevented it from having legal authority.* 
This code of ecclesiastical law punishes heresy with death. 

We are told by the editor of Cranmer's Remains, that this 
book " may be safely referred to as an authentic record of 
the archbishop's opinions,"f It threatens the penalty of 
death, and confiscation of goods, against a denial of the 
Trinity, and certain sentiments of the baptists. The unlaw- 
fulness of magistracy, a community of goods, the universal 
right of any to assume the pastoral office, the symbolical 
nature of the sacraments, and the unlawfulness of infant bap- 
tism, are particularly denounced as heretical. " In case ex- 
communication was despised, and the discipline of the church 
made no impression, the culprits were then to be delivered 
into the hands of the secular magistrates, and they were to 
suffer death by the law."| 

It has been questioned by some of our historians, as by 
Burnet, and more lately by Townsend, whether this deliverance 
to the secular power really implied the penalty of death. 
But no doubt can be left on this point, if we take into con- 
sideration the share that Cranmer had in the martyrdoms of 
Joan Boucher and George Van Pare, and the expressed sen- 
timents of others of the reformers. 

Thus writes Thomas Becon, chaplain to archbishop Cran- 
mer, and prebendary of Canterbury, in the reign of Edward 
the Sixth : — 

** Father. And what sayest thou of heretics ? 

** Son. Even the same that I have said of idolaters, and 
false prophets. 

" Father. May the magistrates also punish them ? 

* Jenkyn's Cranmer, i. Pref. p. ex. f Ibid. p. cxi. 

X Collier, v, 480, edit. 1840. Preb. Townsend's Prel. Dissertation to 
Fox's Acts and Mon. p. 181, last edit. 



i 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 77 

" Son. Yea, and also take them out of this life, if they 
will not repent, amend, and come to the truth." Again — 

" Father. Shall ho be straightways put to death ? 

''Son, St. Paul saith, The magistrate heareth not the sword 
in vain. If he that beareth false witness against man be 
worthy of death by the commandment of God, is he worthy 
of less punishment that beareth false witness against God ? . . . 
N'otwithstandiug, it is to be wished that. . . .the magistrate 
would first of all gently and lovingly deal with heretics, and 
see into what conformity he could bring them with his wis- 
dom and counsel, and also suflfer them to have access unto 
such as be godly learned, which may yet once again have 
conference with them." 

It is somewhat sickening, after this, to hear him exhorting 
the temporal rulers to " be no longer the pope's hangmen." 
He adds, " these smeared pill-pates, I would say, prelates, 
first of all accused him (the heretic), and afterwards pro- 
nounced the sentence of death upon him, and straightways 
delivered him to the temporal magistrate for to be put to 
execution, making the magistrate their hangman, and bond- 
slave, to hang, to draw, to quarter, to bum, to drown, &c., as 
it pleased them to appoint. O slavery ! misery ! unnoble 
nobihty!"* Is this mere blindness, or worthless hypocrisy? 
What appreciable difierence is there between the reformer and 
the papist ? 

Even Latymer could speak complacently to his young sove- 
reign of the cruel death that certain had sufi'ered for their 
faith. " The anabaptists," says he, " that were burnt here in 
divers towns in England (as I heard of credible men, I saw 
not them myself), went to their death even intrepide, as ye 
will say, without any fear in the world, cheerfully. — Well, let 
them go !"t 

* Becon's Catechism, pp. 312-315. Parker Society's edit. 
\ Fourth Sermon before Edward VI. p. 160 ; Parker Society. 



78 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

To these let us add one more testimony ; that of the orna- 
ment and boast of the English church, bishop Jewel. His 
adversary, Harding, taunted him with the brotherhood of 
certain heretics, whom the papists regarded as the spawn of 
the reformation. " There is Servetus," saith he, " the Arian, 
burnt at Geneva, and David George, whose bones were ex- 
humed and burnt at Basil, were they not your brothers? 
And was not poor Joan of Kent also a sister of yours?" 
Thus replieth the " Bishop of Sarisburie. As for David 
George, and Servetus the Arian, and such other the like, 
they were yours, M. Harding, they were not of us. You 
brought them up, the one in Spain, the other in Flanders. 
We detected their heresies, and not you. We arraigned them ; 
we condemned them. We put them to the execution of the 
laws. It seemeth very much to call them our brothers, 
because we burnt them."* Alas ! in Joan's condemnation 
many of the principal reformers had a hand, and countenanced , 
her death. Cranmer, Latymer, Ridley, Lever, and Hutchin- 
son, beside the members of the king's council, consented to 
imbrue their hands in the blood of this poor female, whose 
opinion it is more than probable they mistook on a point of 
the profoundest mystery. Our duty now calls us to refer to 
the history of the people to whom she belonged, and to 
view under these two reigns their struggle for truth and 
liberty. 

* Jewel's Works, Defence of Apology, pp. 27, 28, folio edit. 1611. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBEETT. 79 



SECTION III. 



THE BAPTISTS. 



"The Reformation had scarcely boasted an existence of 
five years, when, from the midst of its adherents, men arose 
■who dechired it to be insufficient."* Their proceedings at 
once awakened the most virulent opposition and bitter com- 
plaint. The chief weapon of the reformers was most unex- 
pectedly employed Mgainst themselves ; their professed scrip- 
tural teacliing came to be examined by the test they had. so 
successfully applied to the dogmas of Rome ; and scripture 
authority to be urged by men, whom universities had not 
nourished, nor academical honors graced, for practices and 
truths, to some extent destructive of the position which 
liad been taken by the followers of Luther, Zuingle, and 
Calvin. 

The church of God must be a community of holy men. 

Faith is the result of divine tuition alone, and cannot be 
compelled by fire or sword. 

A rite which has neither the sanction nor command of the 
Lord Jesus Christ, or his apostles, must not be admitted among 
the ordinances of the Lord's house. 

Secular potentates have neither place nor dominion in the 
kingdom of Him who is th.e blessed mid onbj Potentate, 
the King of kings and Lord of lords. As there is but one 

* Moenler's Symbolism, ii. 155, translated by Robertson. 



80 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

Lord, so there is but one lawgiver in the church, Jesus 
Christ.* 

Such were some of those principles, the enunciation of 
which called forth a torrent of abuse and persecution upon 
the heads of the baptists. They were regarded as the Pariah 
sect among religious communities, and no outrage upon truth 
or justice was left uncommitted to crush them. 

One simple principle, now regarded as an axiom of a scrip- 
tural church policy, lay at the foundation of this internal move- 
ment in the bosom of the reformation. It shall be given in 
the words of the historian Mosheim : " The kingdom of 
Christ, or the visible church he had established on earth, was 
an assembly of true and real saints, and ought, therefore, to be 
inaccessible to the wicked and unrighteous, and also exempt 
from all those institutions which human prudence suggests 
to oppose the progress of iniquity, or to correct or reform 
transgressors."! 

All secular interference must therefore be excluded from 
this holy community. Its formation is the work of the divine 
Spirit operating through the word. Its laws are the precepts, 
holy and self-denying, of the Lord Jesus Christ. Its cer- 
emonies are the simple emblems and memorials of a life 
imparted and sustained by the Spirit of God, through the 
death of the Son of God. Here, since no human laws can 

* Osiandri, Enchiridion, Controv. pp. SO, 43, 112, 113. Tubingge, 
1605. Credunt, Dominum nostrum et Salvatorem Jesum Christum, illud 
in regno sue spirituali, hoc est, in ecclesia I^ovi Testamenti, quae non est 
de mundo, ideoque mundanum regnum maxime respicit, non instituisse, 
neque ofEciis suss ecclesise adjunxisse, &c. Schyn, Hist. Mennonitarum 
Plenior Deductio, p. 50. JS'on ensibus et corporalibus armis, sed spiritu* 
alibus solummodo, hoc est verbo Dei et Spiritu sancto pugnant. Ibid. p. 
147. Populus Dei sese non armat carnahbus armis, sed solum armatura 
Dei, armisque justitiffi. Ibid. p. 214. BuUinger, adv. Catabaptist, fol. 108, 
152, edit. 1535. Symbolism, ii. pp. 183-185. 

f Eccles. Hist. pp. 517, 518 ; royal 8vo. edit. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBlERTT. 81 

inten^ene, no human alliance can be due. The conscience is 
God's seat, the church his temple ; which no human legislator 
should dare to desecrate, no human power control.'^ 

This primary and exalted idea of the church of Christ, 
cherished, and sought to be reahzed by the baptists, was 
adverse to the views of the reformer. From this difference 
naturally resulted the opposition, which, on the one side, led to 
the oppression of conscience, and on the other, to the main- 
tenance of its freedom. The reformers, by inclosing in the fold 
of the chiu-ch all of every degree, age, and character, were 
constrained to employ, and to rely upon external means to 
effect that internal -change which was allowed to be an 
essential feature of the true Chiistian. The church with them 
was not the segi'egation of the good, in bonds of holy amity 
and alliance with each other and the Lord, from the mass of 
pollution reigning around them, but embraced in its maternal 
arms all who at any age had been sealed by baptism as the 
chiu'ch's own, whether they were helpless infants, or strangei's 
to the power of spiritual truth. It was sufficient that they 
bore the magic mark, which, it was asserted, made them 
children of God, and iuheritoi-s of the kingdom of heaven. 
Such a chm'ch might be constituted by human agencies ; it was 
within hiunan power to effect it; and accordingly, by the 
secular arm the reformei^ sought to frame it. The operations 
of the di\ine Spirit were not absolutely essential to the forma- 
tion of such a community ; nor need they wait for ]i\ing 
stones to build the temple of the Lord. The materials were at 
hand ; the initiatory rite could be easily appHed. Repentance 
towards God, and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, could be 
promised by surety, or suppHed by an assent to creeds. 

* Nam quia Rex spiritualia est, ipsius regnum non de mundo, sed de 
ckIo et spirituale, ipsius leges spirituales, ipsius subditi caelorum municipes, 
qui in. hoc mundo non stabilem habent civitatem, sed futuram expectant. 
Schyn, Plenior Deduct., p. 53 

4* 



82 STRUGfGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

It was, moreover, the duty of the secular magistrate to shape 
and fashion the church, so called, to that form which his 
conscience, instructed by the word of God, or by the interpreta- 
tions of the church's teachers, should dictate.* To kings was 
granted the high honor of being its nursing fathers, to protect 
it from its foes, to maintain in physical comfort its ministers, to 
root out the weeds of evil doctrine, and to execute the decisions 
of the ecclesiastical body ; force thus necessarily entered into 
this idea of the Christian community ; and, without exception, 
the reformers yielded to the temporal powers the right of 
determining the form of the church in then* respective 
dominions. 

The fundamental idea of the baptists was antagonistic with 
all this. They thought and said that the temple could not be 
built until God had provided the stones. Holy men must be 
first produced by the power of the Spirit of God, and then shall 
a building rise to the glory of Him who had redeemed them 
by his blood. No human workman could be of use but as the 
channel of blessing ; it was the prerogative of God to create 
anew in Christ Jesus. His word was the only effectual 
instrument of divine energy : force and coercion of every kind 
were inadmissible. Faith is the gift of God. Faith cometh 
hy hearing^ and hearing hy the luord of God ; and no other 
weapon must the ministers of God's word employ. 

Since then the church ought to be the aggregated result of 
an internal divine operation, isxerted on every individual before 
he becomes a member of it, so in its formation no kind of 
outward compulsion can be permitted. The unconscious babe 
cannot be made a member of a community, where a hearty 

* Cur ego hodie tantam sibi potestatem in rebus fidei sumit Christianus 
magistratus 1 — Hoc agit non ut magistratus Bed ut Christian us magistratus, 
nee facit hoc sine precepto et exemplo . . . Inspectemus exemplum Josaphat, 
Joiadse, Josice, Ezechiae, Nabuchodonoseris, et Darii, apud Danielera. 
Bullinger, adv. Catabapt.. fol. 108, 109. 



I 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 83 

willing assent of the regenerated mind is an essential condition 
of membership, since intelligence is not there to give value and 
significance to the deed ; nor may men be driven by force or 
fear, as foolish sheep, ^vithin the fortified barrier of the nation's 
church, since these cannot convert the soul. " Thus it was an 
ideal state of the Christian church, that floated before the 
imagination of the anabaptists, — the confused representation of 
a joyful kingdom of holy and blessed spirits, which inspired 
these sectaries with such deep enthusiasm, gave them such 
power and constancy of endurance, under all persecutions, and 
caused them to exert on all sides so contagious an influence."* 
In accordance with these views, they are represented by Justus 
Menius as thus introducing the novice into the sacred fold : 
" If thou wilt be saved, thou must truly renounce and give up 
all thy works, and all creatures, and lastly, thy own self, and 
must beheve in God alone. But now I ask thee, dost thou 
renounce creatures? Yes. I ask thee again, dost thou re- 
nounce thy own self? Yes. Dost thou beheve in God alone? 
Yes. Then I baptize thee in the name," &c,f 

We may briefly state the opposite ideas of the reformers and 
the baptists ou this important subject, as follows. 

The former rehed on the secular arm to build and maintain 
the church ; the latter, on the Spirit of God. Hence arose on 
the one side the ci\il changes, the congresses, the diets, the 
wars, the conflicts of crowned heads, as they adhered to Rome 
or Wittenberg. On the other, the persecutions, oppressions, 
sufferings, scourgings, the tioyades, and fiery martyrdoms, 
which attended and ht up the labors of these calumniated men. 
Oppression of conscience signahzed the progress of the first, 
liberty of conscience attended the teaching of the last. 

Nothing can be more plain on the surface of history than 
the fact, that this people came every where into colhsion with 

* Moehler's Symbolism, ii. 157, 158. 

t Quoted in Moehler's Symbolism, ii. 163. 



84 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

the civil magistrate. Their existence was regarded as fatal to 
the well-being of all society. " They show themselves to be 
the enemies of God and man," says Calvin. ** They wish," 
he continues, "to abrogate the power of the sword, the 
administration of the public weal. By a shorter cut they plot 
the ruin of the world, and the introduction of a greater license 
for robbery, than can otherwise be found."* But is this 
heavy charge true ? Were they the enemies of all government* 
the sworn foes of all rule and magisterial authority ? Let the 
accuser himself reply ; for it is thus he represents their senti- 
ments as from their own lips. " We grant that the sword is 
ordained of God, but it is without the fold or perfect commu- 
nity of Christ. For this reason the princes and powers of this 
world are appointed to punish offenders, even with death. 
But in the perfect church of Christ, excommunication is the 
final punishment, and without corporal death. "f What is this 
but to say that the sphere of the civil magistrate is without 
the church, and not within it ; that his laws bind man in his 
social relations only, but that in the church there is another 
Lawgiver, on whose prerogative he must not trench. Obedi- 
ence to the civil power they enjoined both as a civil and 
rehgious duty, but resisted its exercise in things of God. 

A considerable number of the baptists, however, carried their 
views of the spirituality and purity of the church still further. 
It was thought to be opposed to the humility of the Christian, 
to seek for lordship over his brethren. Christians were to be 
subject only to the meek, gentle, and pure precepts of Jesus ; 
their only power was that of separation from the evils that arose 
in their midst. N"or can we be surprised, that, witnessing as 
they did the perversion of the civil authority, and suffering in- 
conceivable anguish from its cruel exercise, they came to deem 

* Instruct, adv. Anab. in Tract. Theol. fol. 367. Amstel. IG'ZY. 
\ Ibid. fol. 364. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 85 

it an office incompatible with their allegiance to their Lord, and 
thought it a forbidden thing to perform the functions of magis- 
tracy ; that is, of such magistracy, since they saw it nowhere 
exercised in the mild and loving spirit of the gospel."^" For, 
surely nothing could be more dreadful, or more unchristian, 
than the barbarous and excruciating tortures inflicted by magis- 
trates in the name of the law on these disciples of Christ ; 
magistrates were their foes, their oppressors, their persecutors ; 
inflicting punishment, not for sedition, treason, or crime, but for 
matters of opinion and faith.f Is it wonderful if in some few 
instances they became foes to magistrates ? The coercion and 
force daily practised in both temporal and spiritual affairs, must 
have appeared to them inseparable from the magisterial office ; 
which, however necessary for the civil rule of empires and king- 
doms, are utterly inadmissible into the kingdom of Christ. 

It is not within our purpose to examine or refute the com- 
mon relations of the deeds at Munster. Various considerations 
might be suggested that would palhate or throw doubt on the 
narratives of those events. It is certain that the insurrection 
was clearly opposed to the doctrine, universally maintained 
among the baptists, of the divine institution of magistracy for 
the government of the world ;J and it must be traced to that 

^ Ipsis admodum difficile videtur, religioni Christians exacte obedire, 
et simul officio magistratus politici rite perfungi. Schyn, Plenior Deduct, 
p. 50. Some thought capital punishments altogether discordant with the 
spirit of the gospel, and desired their cessation. 

t " Could the baptists," says Bayle, " only produce those who were 
put to death for attempts against the government, their bulky martyrology 
would make a ridiculous figure ; but it is certain that several anabaptists, 
who suffered death courageously for their opinions, had never any inten- 
tion of rebelling." Hist, and Critical Diet. Art. Anabaptists, Note F. 
edit. Lond. 1734. A specimen of the deeply interesting narratives, con- 
tained in the martyrology above referred to, will be presently given in 
the martyrdoms of Jan Peters and Hendrik Terwoot. 

i Credunt, eum esse Dei ordinationera, necessariam instilutamque ad 



66 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

oppression ■whicli makes a wise man mad. Laden witli chains, 
incarcerated in a noisome and pestilential dungeon, a cruel and 
merciless death before hira, KnipperdoUing maintained to his 
examiners that magistracy was the ordinance of God, but that 
when the commands of the temporal were opposed to those of 
the heavenly superior, " we must obey God rather than man." 
We allow, said his interrogators, that we do not owe obedience 
to the magistrate when he would compel us contrary to the. 
teaching of Christ ; but it does not follow that it is lawful for a 
private person to repel force by force, he should rather observe 
the precept of Christ, who saith, When men persecute you in 
one city, flee ye to another. Most significant is the bre\dty and 
treacherous recollection of the examiner as he gives the pri- 
soner's reply. " He answered, I know not what," says Cor- 
vinus, " concerning the tyi'anny of those who had been the 
cause of their revolt." The rapacity and cruelty of his 
employers must be touched with a gentle hand. The words of 
the " babbhng " prisoner might awaken, if repeated, unpleasant 
and perhaps fearful thoughts in the mind of the oppressor.* 

It was the crime of these persecuted people, that they rejected 
secular interference in the church of God ; it was the boast and 
aim of the reformers everywhere to employ it : the natural fruit 
of the one was persecution, of the other hberty. Among them, 

gubernationem communis societatis humanas, (See. Schyn, Plen. Deduct, 
p. 49. Hist. Mennon. p. 214. 

* Eadem inscitia de inagistratu garriebat, quem, tametsi ordLnationem 
Dei esse fatebatur, tamen rebellionem, si quid secus ac Christus docet, 
jubeat, approbavit, fretus petrina ilia sententia, Oportet Deo magis obedire 
quam hominibus. Ubi quum nos fateiemur obedientiam quidem magis- 
tratui non debeii, si nos a Christi doctrina tiansversos agere conetur, 
attamen hinc non sequi, idcirco vim vi repellere, privatis personis licere, 
Sed potius id faciendum esse, quod Chrittus docuerit, Si vo3 persecuti 
fuerint in hac civitate migrate in aliam, respondit quid nescio de eorum 
Tyrannide, qui rebellandi ipsis oceasionem preebuissont. De Miserabili 
Monast. Anabap. Epistola Ant. Corvini ad Spalatinum Viteb. 1536. 



OF RELlGIors LIBERTY. 87 

therefore, we must look for the germs of that religious freedom 
we now enjoy, though still imperfectly understood. Nor shall 
we be disappointed in our search ; nor open to contradiction, 
when we say, that they alone clearly perceived its truth and 
value, and maintained it during the stormy and eventful period 
of the reformation. That they should hold it was the inevitable 
consequence of then- idea of the church, and it was stamped 
upon them with a distinctness, which neither the flames nor 
floods of martyrdom could destroy. It is only thus can be 
explained the univei-sal storm of execration and persecution 
that fell upon them. They were thought to deny one of the 
highest attributes of human government : it brought them into 
colhsion with the very mainspring and support of the reforma- 
tion. 

There is not a Confession of faith, nor a Creed fi'amed by 
any of the reformers, which does not give to the magistrate a 
coercive power in religion, and almost every one at the same 
time curses the resisting baptist. Thus, in the confession of 
Basle, it is written, "God hath assigned to the magistrate, 
who is his minister, the sword, and chief external power, for 
the defence of the g<^l, and for the revenging and punishing 
of the evil, Rom. xiii. 4 ; 1 Peter ii. 14. Therefore eveiy 
Christian magistrate doth direct all his strength to this, that 
among those which are committed to his charge, the word of 
God may be sanctified, his kingdom may be enlarged, and men 
may hve according to his will, with an earnest rooting out of all 
naughtiness." Thus the confession of Bohemia, " They do 
govern instead of God upon earth, and are his deputies ; it is 
meet that they frame themselves to the example of the superior 
Lord, by following and resembling him, and by learning of him 

mercy and justice He ought to be a partaker, and, as 

it were, chiefly, a minister of the power of the Lamb, Jesus 
Christ, .... by this authority of his, to set forth the truth of 
the holy gospel, make way for the truth wheresoever, be a 



88 STRUaGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

defender of the ministers and people of Christ, suffer not (so far 
as in him heth) idolatry, or the tyranny of antichrist, much less 
follow the same."* 

In these sentiments all the reformed commmiities agi-eed. 
All committed themselves to a course fatal to the liberties of 
man, and to the regal prerogatives of Jesus Christ. Honor, 
ease, and wealth flowed in upon the supporters of thrones, but 
tribulation unto death was the portion of those who ventured to 
oppose them. Most affectingly does the eminent Simon Menno 
refer to this contrast. " For eighteen years with my poor fee- 
ble wife and httle children has it behoved me to bear great and 
various anxieties, sufferings, griefs, afflictions, miseries, and per- 
secutions, and in every place to find a bare existence, in fear 
and danger of my hfe. While some preachers are reclining on 
their soft beds and downy pillows, we oft are hidden in the 
caves of the earth ; while they are celebrating the nuptial or 
natal days of their children, with feasts and pipes, and rejoicing 
with the timbrel and the harp, we are looking anxiously about, 
fearing the barking of the dogs, lest persecutors should be sud- 
denly at the door ; while they are saluted by all around as 
doctors, masters, lords, we are compellediJo hear ourselves called 
anabaptists, ale-house preachers, seducers, heretics, and to be 
hailed in the devil's name. In a word, while they for their 
ministry are remunerated with annual stipends, and prosperous 
days, our wages are the fire, the sword, the death."| 

Were they inferior to their persecutors in godhness, or deserv- 
ing of this fate for their crimes ? Or was it but the fulfilment 
of the Saviour's word. In the world ye shall have tribulation? 
Let a catholic reply, the president of the famous council of 
Trent. " If you behold their cheerfulness in suffering persecu- 
tions, the anabaptists run before all their heretics. If you will 
have regard to the number, it is like that in multitude they 

* Harmony of Confessions, pp. 475 — 477. Hall's edit. 1842. 
t Schyn. Plenior Deduct, p. 133. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 89 

would swarm above all others, if they were not giievouslj 
plagued and cut off with the knife of persecution. If you have 
an eye to the outward appearance of godliness, both the 
Lutherans and Zuinghans must needs grant that they far pass 
them. 

" If you wiU be moved by the boasting of the word of God, 
these be no less bold than Calvin to preach, and then- doctrine 
must stand aloft above all the glory of the world, must stand 
inducible above all power, because it is not their word, but the 
word of the h\nng God. ISTeither do they cry with less boldness 
than Luther, that with their doctrine, which is the word of God, 
they shall judge the angels. And surely, how many soever have 
written against this heresy, whether they were cathohcs or 
heretics [reformers], they were able to overthrow it, not so much 
by the testimony of the scriptures, as by the authority of the 
chm'ch."^ 

We cannot pass over one instance of theu' patience under 
suffering and boldness in the face of death, illustrative as it is 
of their attachment to hberty of conscience, and of the views of 
theh character we have endeavored to enforce. The scene is 
in Holland, the year 1551. An old man of seventy-five is 
brought before the bloody tribunal ; his hair white, his body 
lean with age, his manners irreproachable, springing from a 
heart fearing God. In his old age he had been baptized, and 
received into the community of the church. And now, as a 
sheep bound for the slaughter-house, and surrounded by a num- 
ber of the burghers, he sjis cahnly awaiting the approach of the 
criminal magistrate to pronounce the sentence of death. 

* The Hatchet of Heresies, translated by R. Shacklock, fol. 48, edit. 
1565. After noticing the arguments of Guy de Bres, Bayle proceeds, 
" A proof how greatly prejudicial the sect of the anabaptists has been to 
the protestants, who were obliged to refute it by arguments, which were 
turned against them by the papists." Bayle's Diet. Art. Anabaptists, 
Note F. 



90 STRrGQLEB AND TRIUMPHS 

An officer speaks to him : Good father, why do you continue 
thus obstinately in your cursed error, do you think there is no 
such place as hell ? 

Old Man. Sir, I believe a hell most certainly, but I know- 
nothing of the errors you mention. 

Another. Yes, you are in an error, and in so dreadful a one, 
that if you die in it you will be damned for ever. 

Old Man. Are you sure of that ? 

Officer. Yes, it is as sure as anything in the world. 

Old Man. If it is so, then are ye murderers of my soul. 

There is silence in the multitude as the old man thus dis- 
courses ; their attention is more earnest, and the officer, half 
enraged, and ashamed, loudly continues. 

Officer. What do you say, you impertinent fellow ? Ai'e 
we the murderers of your soul ? 

Old Man. Do not be angry, Sir, at the sound of truth. 
You yourself know that faith is the gift of God, that neither I 
nor any other can extort this saving gift out of God's hands, 
that God bestows his gifts on one man early, on another late, 
just as he called the husbandmen into the vineyard. Suppose 
now that I had not yet received this gift, as you have, ought 
you to punish me for that misfortune ? Might not God, in case 
you suffered me to live, might he not impart to me as well as 
to you, this wholesome gift in a week, a month, a year ? If 
then you hinder me from sharing therein, by depriving me of 
this time of grace, what are you otherwise than murderers of 
my soul ? 

But the officer of justice hurries him away, amid the mur- 
murs of the people, whose hearts are moved by his courage and 
his words. His condemnation does not linger, neither does the 
sun reach his meridian splendor, before the glory of the Lamb 
bursts upon the vision of his martyred servant. He was 
beheaded for his testimony to Christ.* 

* Brandt's Hist, of the Reformation in the Low Countries, 1. 92, edit, 
Lond. 1720. 



I 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. • 91 

No countiy afforded a refuge to this persecuted people, 
thougli everywhere identified with the beginnings of the refor- 
mation.* Under whatever phase the reformed doctrines appeared, 
the principle which governed their success or defeat met with 
strenuous opponents in the baptists. Others might lend then* 
consciences to the yoke of the civil power, they must resist ; 
it was not the easy yoke of Christ. Their appearance in 
England had been prepared by the publication of a book, 
entitled " The Sum of Scripture ;" many extracts from which 
obtained the honor of a formal condemnation in an assembly of 
bishops and others, convened by Warham, the archbishop of 
Canterbury, at the command of king Henry VIII., in the year 
1530. It does not appear whether this book was the produc- 
tion of a baptist, although the sentiments condemned were 
unquestionably held by them, and for aught that we can find, 
by them only. We pass by such as do not relate to oui' imme- 
diate subject, and produce the following : — 

" There be two sorts of people in the world, one is the king- 
dom of God, to which belongeth all true Christian people, and 
in this kingdom Christ is king and lord, and it is impossible 
that in this kingdom, that is to say, among very true Christian 
men, that the sword of justice temporal should have aught to 
do." 

" There is another sort of people belongeth to the world, and 
they be unrighteous ; and they had need of the sword of tem- 
poral justice." 

" Jesus Christ hath not ordained in his spiritual kingdom, 
which is all true Christian people, any sword, for he himself is 
the king and governor, without sword, and w^ithout auy outward 
law." 

" Christian men among themselves have nought to do with 

* Nam ubicumque Christus emergit, mox adsunt catabaptistse, ut 
ecclesias renatus et feliciter institutas vastent ac dissecent. Bullinger, 
adv. Gatabapt. Epist. ad Lector. 



92 STRUG&LES AND TRIUMPHS 



1 



the sword, nor with the law, for that is to them neither needful 
nor profitable ; the secular sword belongeth not to Christ's 
kingdom, for in it is none but good, and justice." 

In another work, condemned at the same time, it was also 
asserted that, " No man ought to enforce, and compel men to 
fasting and prayer by laws, as they hitherto have done."* 

Many other sentiments were with these pronounced ungodly 
and erroneous. Tyndale's New Testament was especially stig- 
matized, and the scriptures were declared to be unnecessary for 
the people. The source of these " damnable heresies " would 
seem to be indicated by the two proclamations for their suppres- 
sion, which immediately followed the convention. They had 
been sown, it was declared, by the disciples of Luther, and other 
heretics^ perverters of Christ's religion. Severe punishments 
were threatened " against the malicious and wicked sects of 
heretics, who, by perversion of holy scripture, do induce erro- 
neous opinions, sow sedition among Christian people, and finally 
disturb the peace and tranquillity of Christian realms, as lately 
happened in some parts of Germany, where, by the procure- 
ment and sedition of Martin Luther and other heretics, were 
slain an infinite number of Christian people."f 

Reference is here evidently made to the tumults which 
sprang up in Germany in 1525, and with which it was supposed 
the doctrines of the baptists had much to do. To none 
other sect can the sentiments we have quoted, and the con- 
demnation of them in the proclamation, be supposed to refer. 
Two years before, seven baptists from Holland had been 
imprisoned, and two of them burnt.}; Thus clearly showing 
that such opinions had been broached in this countiy by 
members of that sect which was known to hold them. 

The year in which Henry obtained the recognition of his 

* Wilkins, Concilia, iii. 732, 733, fol. ed. 1738. 

t Ibid. iii. 737. 

X Danvers, Treatise of Baptism, p. 307, edit. 1674. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 93 

claim as supreme head of the clim-cli, witnessed its exercise in 
two proclamations published against the baptists and sacra- 
mentaries, as the followei*s of Zuingie in his opinions on the 
eucharist, were called. Many of the king's " lo\dng subjects 
had been induced and encouraged, arrogantly and superstitious- 
ly, to argue and dispute in open places, taverns, and ale-houses, 
not only upon baptism, but also upon the holy sacrament of the 
altar." The di^dne honor and glory required his immediate 
interference, and his grace's church must be defended from the 
inroads of these pestilent fellows. Of them, and his purposes 
towards them, he thus informs us : — " Forasmuch as divei-s and 
sundry strangere of the sect and false opinion of the anabaptists 
and sacramentaries, being lately come into this realm, where 
they lurk secretly in divei's corners and places, minding craftily 
and subtilly to provoke and stir the king's lo\ing subjects to 
their errors and opinions, whereof part of them, by the gi'eat 
travail and dihgence of the king's highness and his council, be 
apprehended and taken, the king's most royal majesty 

declareth like a godly and cathohc prince, that he 

abhon-eth and detesteth the same sects, and their wicked and 
abominable errors and opinions, and intendeth to proceed 
against such of them as be already apprehended, according to 
then merits, and the laws of the realm." And he further 
commands all such as hav^e not been found, to depart in eight 
or ten days, with all celerity from the kingdom.* 

The proclamation next following biings into yet closer 
juxtaposition the royal prerogative, and its pereecuting cha- 
racter ; it also shows, by its early pubHcation after the above, 
the futility of all the despot's efforts to destroy the maintainers 
of these obnoxious opinions. Many strangers, we are informed, 
baptized in infancy, but who, contemning that holy sacrament, 
had presumptuously re-baptized themselves, had entered the 
realm, spreading eveiy where their pestilent heresies " against 

* Wilkins, iii. 777. 



94' STRtrGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

God and his holy scriptures, to the great unquietness of 
Chiistendom, and perdition of innumerable Christian souls." 
A great number had been judicially convicted, " and have and 
shall for the same suffer the pains of death." The king's most 
royal majesty, being " supreme head in earth, under God, of 
the church of England, alway intending to defend and main- 
tain the faith of Christ, and daily studying and minding above 
all things to save his lo\dng subjects from falling into any 
erroneous opinions," accordingly ordains the banishment of all 
such heretics in twelve days, " on pain to suffer death," if they 
abide, and be apprehended and taken.'* 

The royal pastor and vicar of Christ soon exhibited, in a 
somewhat sanguinary manner, his care and anxiety for the 
eternal well-being of his people. In the following year ten were 
put to death in sundiy places of the realm, while ten others 
saved their lives by a timely recantation. Besides these, nine- 
teen Hollanders were accused of heretical opinions, " denying 
Christ to be God and man, or that he took flesh and blood of 
the Virgin Maiy, or that the sacraments had any effect on those 
that received them." Fom-teen adhered to their convictions, 
and were burnt in pairs in several places. " It was complained," 
says the historian, "" that all these drew their damnable errors 
from the indiscreet use of the scriptures." It was probably of 
these sufferers for conscience sake that Latymer spake in his 
sermon l^efore king Edward in 1552. 

The oppressive and persecuting nature of the royal supre- 
macy was thus distinctly evinced. The political necessities of 
the king prevented its exercise on cathohcs or reformers ; but it 
fell with crushing weight on a defenceless people, who dared 
not yield their rehgious convictions, as was done by othei's, to 
the dictation of an arrogant and impious trespasser upon the 
domain of the Highest. 

The year 1538 is pai'ticularly noticeable for the zealous 

* Wilkiris, iii. 779. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 95 

effoi-ts made to eradicate the baptists from the land. The king 
had been for some time flattered with the hope of being placed 
at the head of the league, -svhich was contemplated by the 
German Protestant princes for their defence, against the 
combined powers of the emperor, Charles the Fifth, and the 
cxtholic states. It promised to be mutually ad^'antageous, 
could it be effected. In 1535, therefore, the king sent bishops 
Fox and Heath, with Dr. Barnes, as ambassadors to Smalcalde, 
to treat upon the subject, and several divines were to be sent 
to England for the purpose of determining those points of a 
rehgions character to which the king hesitated to agree. 

It was in this year (1538) that the ambassadors of the league 
appeared at Henry's court, headed by Burghardt, ^'ice- 
chancellor of the elector of Saxony. Three points only 
remained for determination, the denial of the cup to the laity, 
the continuance of private masses, and the cehbacy of the 
clergy. Henry would not give way. His mind w^as biassed 
by the bishops who still adhered to the old superstition.^ In 
the month of October the king wrote to the elector, requesting 
the presence of Melancthon to assist him in promoting the 
" true glory of Christ, and the tranquillity and discipline of his 
rehgion." It might be that one so gentle could strike out a 
middle path, at once satisfactory to the royal conscience, and to 
the earnest desires of the reformers. 

About this time one Peter Tasch, a baptist, was apprehended 
by the landgrave of Hesse. On him was found a correspon- 
dence with certain Enghsh baptists, some one of w^hom had 
recently published a book on the incarnation of Christ. Much 
benefit was expected to follow this pubhcation, in the wider 
dissemination of their opinions in this country, whither Tasch 
himself proposed shortly to proceed, unless hindered, as he 
said, by the Spirit of God. Of these circumstances the elector 

• Short's Hist, of the Ch. of England, p. 132, edit. 1840. 



06 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

informs Hemy, when replying to his application for the assist- 
ance of Melancthon. A two-fold good was expected to follow 
this token of evident anxiety for the welfare of Henry's realm. 
The king would be flattered and pleased, and, at the same 
time, the elector would purge himself from all suspicion of 
harboring these people in his own dominions ; thus the main 
object of the ambassage, the union of Henry with the league, 
would be facihtated. He therefore transmitted a copy of the 
correspondence, and described their heresies and practices. It 
was in Frisia and Westphaha, he tells the king, that the sect 
especially found its home. It fled those countries where the 
gospel shone with purest light. For this reason the churches 
of Germany were more tranquil than those of Belgia; still, 
through the whole of Germany these errorists, impostors, and 
fanatics, stealthily wandereid. One feature, especially, marked 
them, — they condemned the baptism of infants. To this prime 
heresy they added many other errors. " And inasmuch as an 
appearance of great humility and patience is most efficacious in 
deceiving the souls of men, they teach a community of goods, 
disapprove of all punishment, deny the duty of a Christian to 
exercise magistracy or justice, refuse to take an oath, and lastly 
they take away the political administration which God hath 
appointed and approved." He further enumerates some other 
errors by which a superstitious people were led astray. " They 
wander," he says, " in secret places, and spread in privacy the 
virus of their doctrine. When seized, learned men attempt to 
save them, but if they pertinaciously defend their condemnation 
of baptism, or their other impieties, or their judgment of 
political duties, which itself is seditious, then they are punished." 
Thus did the elector, under the tuition of the reformers, and by 
the pen of Melancthon, exhibit his zeal and resolution to defend 
the " true and cathoUc doctrine of the church of Christ."* 
Henry's zeal required but little to inflame it against these 

* Seckendorf, Hist. Lutheran., lib. III. sect. 66. Add. i. p. 181. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 97 

obnoxious oppugners of his supremacy over the church of God. 
On the 1st of October he issued a proclamation to Cranmer, 
and eight other bishops and clerics, to proceed inquisitorially 
against the baptists, to search for their books, and particularly 
to scnitinize with all diligence their letters. They were to urge 
them to recant, confuting and judging them " by the dogmas 
of the cathohc church, and by the scripture." But if tliey were 
obstinate, then were they to exterminate them from the con- 
gregation of the faithful, and finally at their pleasure commit 
them, with their writings, to the flames.* This cruel edict 
could not have much hindered the progress of the truth, since 
we find the king, on the 16th of K"ovember following, con- 
strained to publish a proclamation commanding that no book 
should be imported or printed without a hcense, especially and 
again condemning to the flames the works of baptists and 
sacramentaries."f 

Not that these proceedings were without their seal of blood 
and martyrdom. On the 24th of November some of these 
men, who, " whilst their hands were busied about their manu- 
factm-es, theh heads were also beating about points of divinity," 
bare fagots at Paul's Cross, and three days after a man and 
woman were burnt in Smithfield.]; The \dolence of the king 
yet further appeared in the following month, while keeping 
Oluistmas at Hampton Court. Cruelty was pastime and 
festidty to him. A letter was issued to the justices of peace 
throughout the countiy " to set forth his good intentions for 
the wealth and happiness of his people !" Its burden was an 
increase of rigor against the imfortunate baptists.§ Many of 
them fled. It was in the depth of winter when in secrecy and 
haste they sought refuge in Holland. But betrayed by en^dous 
men they feU into the hands of tyrants there. After many 
trials of then* faith, exhibiting thi'oughout great patience and 

» Wilkins, iii. 836, 837. t Fuller, Bk. V. sect. iv. c. 11. 

1 Bumetjii. 13, edit. 1715. § Burnet, iii. 140. 



98 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

perseverance under their sufferings, they were sentenced to 
death. On the 7th of January, sixteen men were beheaded at 
Delft, and fifteen women di'owned, for their testimony to the 
truth of God. Twenty-seven other refugees had but a few 
months before passed through the gi'eat tribulation, and laid 
down their lives on the same spot.* 

No crime was charged against them, but that of thinking 
differently from their persecutors. Whether their sentiments 
were true or false, they were martyrs for opinion. No pretence 
of rebellion, nor any disposition to resist lawful authority, could 
be substantiated. It was seditious in them merely to reject the 
exercise of royal or magisterial power in things of God. That 
this cruelty failed as it deserved, we have the king's own decla- 
ration ; he found it needful to adopt milder measures, and to 
try what an act of grace could do. On February 25th, 1539, 
he accordingly issued his royal proclamation of mercy. The 
baptists were the particular objects of the sovereign's anxiety ; 
many of his people had imbibed their doctrines, and this docu- 
ment is an unexpected and unquestionable testimony to their 
numbers and constancy.f 

* Van Braght, Het Bloedig Toonel of Martalaers-Spigel des Deops- 
gesinde, ii. 145. 

t " And wherefore of late certain anabaptists and sacramentaries, com- 
ing out of outward parts into this realm, have, by diverse and many- 
perverse and crafty means, seduced many simple persons of the king's 
subjects, which, as his highness trusteth, now be sorry for their offences, 
and minding fully to return again to the catholic church .... the king's 
highness, like a most loving parent much moved with pity, tendering the 
winning of them again to Christ's flock, and much lamenting also their 
simplicity, so by devilish craft circumscribed .... of his inestimable good- 
ness, pity, and clemency, is content to remit, pardon, and.forgive .... all 
and singular such persons, as well his grace's subjects as other, all such 
faults as they have committed by falling into such wrong and perverse 
opinions, by word or writing." He concludes by announcing his deter- 
mination that if any should in future " fall to any such detestable and 
damnable opinions," the laws should be strictly and without mercy 
enforced against them. Wilkins, iii. 843. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 99 

It is not conceivable that this degi-ee of lenity should have been 
exhibited towards them, had they been guilty of rebelhous or trai- 
torous practices. Their rehgious sentiments alone exposed them 
to the stroke of the u'on hand of the oppressor — sentiments fatal 
to the high-handed and impious assumption of the monarch. But 
neither gentleness nor severity could hinder the progress of the 
truth. The king's care about rehgion failed to prevent " divers 
great and real errors and anabaptistical opinions from creeping 
about the realm." In 1540, he again attempted what threats 
could do. Resolved, if possible, to exterminate them, the bap- 
tists were excluded from the general pardon proclaimed at the 
rising of parhament in July. That none might mistake the 
objects of his indignation, he enumerated then* errors. " Infants 
ought not to be baptized ; it is not lawful for a Christian man 
to bear office or rule in the commonwealth ; every manner of 
death, with the time and horn* thereof, is so certainly prescribed, 
appointed, and determined to every man by God, that neither 
any piince by his word can alter it, nor any man by his wilful- 
ness prevent or change it."'^ Such were some of the opinions 
to be answered with fieiy wrath to those that maintained them. 
Truly they imply the helplessness of sovereign authority to turn 
back the purposes of God, or to change the ordinances of his 
house. But the oppressed, like the childi'en of Israel in Egypt, 
grew and multiphed. 

Amid the fluctuating pohcy of this reign, an almost uniform 
course of pei-secution was pursued. And if both cathohcs and 
protestants felt occasionally the severity of the royal prerogative, 
they yet united to hunt down with loud howhngs of execration 
those who committed the unpardonable crime of exercising 
hberty of judgTnent, and of uttering sentiments destructive of 
the monstrous assumptions which make the church the fold of 
every unclean beast, the prey of ravening wolves wearing the 
garb of messengers of the Hving God. 

« Collier, v. 69. Strype, Mem. I. i. 552. 



100 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

The ascendancy of the reform party in the councils of 
Edward, by no means improved the position of the baptists. 
Theii' presence was regarded as the reproach of the reformation, 
and doubtless in some measure retarded its progi-ess. The 
reformers stigmatized their opinions as the depths of Satan — 
an artifice of the gi-eat enemy to support his tottering throne 
against the true followers of the Lamb. They attempted dis- 
putation by word and writing, inveighed strongly against their 
so-called sedition against the rightful power of princes, and 
urged its repression by force of arms. Not a reformer of any 
eminence can be named who did not take part in this crusade. 
Luther, Melancthon, Zuingle, Bucer, Bulhnger, Calvin, and 
others abroad ; at home, Cranmer, Latymer, Ridley, Barnes, 
Philpot, Becon, Turner, Veron, and many more. Whether the 
baptists were confounded in dispu.tation or not, " the burden of 
the song is always, that at the last the magistrates exerted their 
authority." Penal laws, the ratio ultima of divines, were their 
most convincing arguments — their Achilles.* 

It was natural that the reformers should highly laud the 
tranquillity which they enjoyed during the short reign of the 
youthful Edward. It was indeed to them " a breathing time." 
So far as they v/ere concerned, the rage of persecution ceased : 
to try, as it were, their temper, and to put to the proof their 
charity and magnanimity. But though the sword was wrested 
from their adversaries' hands, it was employed with unsparing 
severity on the obnoxious sect. Even in the first year of 
Edward's reign, we find Ridley and Gardiner strangely united 
together in a commission to deal with two baptists of Kent. 
Gardiner had but lately been released from prison, into which 
he had been thrown for his bold remonstrances against the 
innovating purposes of the council. He must have been reluc- 
tant to act with his fellow bishop, though it were to pei"secute, 
since Ridley felt himself constrained seriously to exhort his 

* Bayle's Diet. Art. Anabaptists, Note B. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 101 

colleague, not only to receive tlie true doctrine of justification, 
but also to be diligent in confounding the numerous baptists of 
his diocese.* 

Their numbers, however, still increased. Theii* opinions were 
"beheved by many honest-meaning people."f It might be 
that Robert Cook, or Cooch, was not one of this kind, since 
through fear of loss of place he finally recanted, and solaced 
himself for his retractation by retaining the office of gentleman 
of the queen's chapel in Ehzabeth's reign, which his opinions 
had brought in jeopardy ; at the period in question he was a 
man in some repute in the court of Edward. He was of com*- 
teous, fair deportment, of some learning, and well skilled in 
music ; to which we may add, the description of Dr. Tm'ner, 
his antagonist, a few years later, that he wore a ring, was a 
curious musician, a tall man, and hved single. He was in 
habits of intimacy with Parkhurst, Coverdale, Jewel, Turner, 
and other learned men, with whom he often disputed against 
the baptism of infants, and on original sin, besides " dispersing 
divers odd things ";|; about the Lord's supper. With them he 
went into exile during the reign of Mary. 

* Strype's Memorials, II. i. 107. " In very deed I was sent from the 
council to my lord of Winchester, to exhort him to receive also the true 
confession of justification. And because he was very refractorious, I said 
to him. Why, my lord, what make you so great a matter herein 1 You 
see many anabaptists rise up against the sacrament of the altar : I pray 
you, my lord, be diligent in confounding of them. For at that time my 
lord of Winchester and I had to do with two anabaptists in Kent." 
Ridley's Examinations, Fox, Acts, &c. iii. 489, ed. 1641. 

t Strype, Mem. II. i. 110. 

t Among the Zurich Letters, second series, page 236, is a letter from 
him to Rodolph Gualter, under the date of August 13th, 1573. In this 
he inquires the opinion of Gualter on certain circumstances attending the 
primitive celebration of the Lord's supper, which he thinks ought to be 
observed with a plentiful supply of food and wine, after the manner of 
the paschal feast, and the Corinthian agapae. In Edward's reign, he was 
keeper of the wine-cellar. Peter Martyr wrote him a long letter in 
defence of infant baptism. 



102 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

Dr. Turner seems to have been particularly incited to oppose 
him. "Because," says he, in the dedication of his book to 
Latymer, " I did perceive that divers began to be infected with 
the poison of Pelagius, I devised a lecture in Thistleworth 
against two of the opinions of Pelagius, namely, against that 
children have no original sin, and that they ought not to be 
baptized. But within a few weeks after, one of Pelagius' dis- 
ciples, in the defence of his master's doctrine, wrote against my 
lecture, with all the learning and cunning that he had. But 
lest he should glory and crake among his disciples, that I could 
not answer him, and to the intent that the venomous seed of 
his sowing may be destroyed, and so hindered from bring- 
ing forth fruit, I have set out this book."* 

The paucity of existing documents written by baptists of this 
age, renders any accession to our gains, however small, of 
great value. And though they may pass through the refracting 
medium of bitter enmity, they are of the more value from their 
unquestionable authenticity. We may then be permitted to 
quote a few passages from this rare work. 

The rejection of the reformers' practice of infant baptism 
might, on the principle of antagonism which so often rules in 
controversy, be expected to lead to some modification of the 
doctrine of original sin, on which it was professedly founded. 
It was held that baptism was necessary to salvation, that by it 

* A Preservatiue, or Triacle agaynste the poyson of Pelagius lately 
renued and styrred up agayn by the furious secte of the Anabaptistes : 
deuysed by Wyllyam Turner, Doctor of Physick. Imprint, 30th Jan. 
1551, not paged. In the reign of Henry, Turner was an active preacher 
of Lutheranism throughout the country, for which he was imprisoned. 
Being liberated, he went to Italy, and at Ferrara acquired the title of 
Doctor of Medicine. On Edward's accession, he returned home, and 
was preferred to a prebend of York, and made canon of Windsor ; he 
was ordained in 1552, after his preferment. He was also incorporated 
M.D. of Oxford, and made physician to the Duke of Somerset. After 
his exile under Mary, he regained all his preferaients. Tanner, Biblioth. 
Script. &c. p. 726, ed. 1748. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 103 

sins actual and original were remitted, and it was concluded 
that to refuse baptism to infants, involved either their final per- 
dition, if so dying, or their freedom from that original depra^dty 
or guilt which brings death on all the posterity of Adam. It 
was in the following manner, Turner informs us, that the bap- 
tists met the former part of the assertion. " By baptism alone 
is no salvation, but by baptism and preaching ; and certain it is 
that God is able to save his chosen church without these means. 
But this is his ordinary way to save and damn the whole 
world, namely, by offering remission of sins and baptism to all 
the world, that thereby the behevers may be absolved from all 
conscience of sin, and the disobedient and unbelievers bound 
still either to amend or to be damned ; for he that beheveth not 
is already damned." In another place the baptist most plainly 
asserts, for Turner professes to quote from one of their writings, 
that a moral change must precede the rite ; of this it is only 
the symbol, and without it is unprofitable. " For this, I say, 
the remission of sins is offered to all, but all receive it not ; the 
chm-ch sanctified by faith in the blood of Christ only receiveth 
it, and unto them only baptism belongeth. Therefore none 
ought to receive it but such as have not only heard the good 
promises of God, but have also thereby received a singular con- 
solation in their hearts, through remission of sin, which they by 
faith have received. For if any receive baptism without this 

persuasion, it profiteth them nothing Sacraments do not 

profit them which hear not the promise, and know not what it 
meaneth." 

But if so, the reformer would reply, how can the original 
depra\ity of man be removed ? The laver of baptism is the 
fountain where the birth-sin is washed away ; do you mean to 
say that mankind did not fall in Adam, and become partaker 
of his guilt ? " But now, I say," rephes the baptist, " that all 
the world hath sinned, and is defiled in Adam. How now, 
will water scorn' away the filth of this corruption ? No ; it is 



104 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

a wound received in the soul, and is washed away but with the 
only faith in the blood of Christ Though sin be com- 
mon to all, yet baptism is not common to all." But what of 
infants ? Can they beheve ? Are they not defiled with the 
leprosy of sin ? How may they wash and be clean ? Thus 
then the baptist. " If Christ had counted infants so defiled 
with Adam's sin as ye do, he would never have sent his apostles 
and us unto children to be defiled of them. But now he sendeth 
us thither for cleanness, to become such as they are, if we would 
enter into the kingdom of God ; washed to the unwashed, 
christened to the unchristened, believers to unbelievers : not to 
become leprous, but that we should be full of innocency and 
simphcity ; for it is written, Except ye convert, and become as 
these infants, ye shall not enter in the hingdom of heaven. 
(For they are pure virgins, and they have made white their 
garments in the blood of the Lamb.)" His evident meaning is, 
that the blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin ; original, in 
those who cannot believe, — original and actual, in those who 
can. Turner would seem most reluctantly to quote the latter 
explanatory clause of this passage (for he places it in the mar- 
gin), important as it is to vindicate the baptists from the charge 
of denying with Pelagius all original defilement ; there was cor- 
ruption, but not guilt-; depravity, but not sin. That ancient 
heretic held, " that baptism is necessary for persons of all ages, 
in order that the baptized pereon might be adopted as a son of 
God ; not because he derived from his parents anything which 
could be expiated in the laver of regeneration."* An opinion 
sufficiently diverse to have prevented the confounding the bap- 
tists with the Pelagians. But a point vi^as gained, if. ancient 
obloquy could be attached to their supposed modern represen- 
tatives. 

Whether Dr. Turner felt himself unable to reply, or the 
question too thorny for a clerical physician to handle, he was 

* Davenant on Colossians, ii. 326. Allport's translation. 



OF KELIGIOUS LIEERTi-. 105 

not unwilling nor forgetful to remind his antagonist of the peril 
in which he stood, while maintaining these obnoxious views, 
" For as much as ye are an open felon against the king's laws, 
and have committed such felony, as ye are excepted out of the' 
pardon, whereof thieves and robbers are partakers, Almighty 
God amend you, and bring you into the high way again, and 
save you from it, that ye have justly deserved." Threats and 
bribes were well approved modes of conversion in those days, 
and Eobert Cook fell beneath their combined power. Heresy 
had ceased to be ti-eated as an ecclesiastical offence among the 
reformers, inasmuch as it was felony and ti'eason to oppose the 
will of the magistrate in the imposition of religious behef.^' 
True martyrs were thought to be found only amongst the pro- 
testants of estabhshed churches, the upholders of national creeds. 
All other sufferei-s for conscience' sake, were execrable traitors 
and felons, enduring that only which they had "justly deserved." 
That hfe and death should hang on the profession of such sen- 
timents as the above, is truly a display of the most hateful 
tyranny, to be abhorred by eveiy one who receives the words of 
Jesus, / came not to destroy meii's lives, but to save them. 

The year 1548 A\itnessed several recantations of these 
sentiments. Many strenuous efforts were made to put down by 
force opinions now freely broached in opposition to the views 
of the ruhng party .f The absurdity of supposing that the 
civil magistrate has superior advantages for the discernment of 
truth, or that anything short of infalhbility can justify the 
presumption of dictating to the conscience of his subjects, may 
be well illustrated by a reference to the catechism now put forth 

* " Let it not make thee despair, neither yet discourage thee, O reader, 
that it is forbidden thee in pain of life and goods, or that it is made 
breaking of the king's peace, or treason unto his highness, to read the 
word of thy soul's health." Tyndale, Pref. to Obedience of a Christian 
Man. Works, i. 165. 

t Strype's Cranmer, pp. 254-257. 
6* 



106 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

by Cranmer for the guidance of the popular mind, and to 
preserve it from the heresies and "naughty doctrine" taught 
by false and j)rivy preachers. Could their doctrine be more 
heretical or " naughty" than the following ? — " That if it had 
happened to us to be born of heathen parents, and to die Avith- 
out baptism, we should be damned everlastingly ;" that the 
second birth is by the water of baptism, in which our sins are 
forgiven, and the Holy Ghost poured into us ; that there are 
three holy seals or sacraments by which God's ministers do 
work, baptism, absolution, and the Lord's supper ; that baptism 
makes us partakers of the remission of sins, of the Holy Ghost, 
and of the " whole righteousness of Christ ;" and that when the 
minister absolves, we ought to believe that our sins are truly 
forgiven.'^' Was Cranmer indeed fitted to be the infallible 
instructor of the people, in pure doctrine, freed from the inven- 
tions of men ? 

At all events he will act as if it were so. For the next year 
(1547) becomes memorable for the establishment of a protestant 
inquisition, under the primate's especial direction, and by which 
two persons at least were doomed to a fiery purgation. This 
tribunal continued in active operation through the remainder of 
the reign. Upon the pretext that many strangers from abroad 
had appeared in the country, and were making many proselytes, 
a commission was issued on the 12th of April, granting the 
amplest powers to inquire after heretical pravity.f The inquisi- 
tors| were Cranmer, the bishops of Ely, Worcester, Chichester, 
Lincoln, and Rochester, with some of the king's counsellors ; his 
two secretaries, with Cox, Latymer, Hales, and others. We 
must give the opening portion of this document, as it will mark 
distinctly the connection of the dogma of royal supremacy in 

* Cranmer's Catechism, pp. 51, 182, 183, 186-189, 197, 202. Oxford 
edition. 

t Crosby, i. 47. 

X Cognitores, inquisitores, judices, et commissarios nostros, &,c. 
Rvmer's Fccdera, Tom. vi. pars iii. ed. Hagse, 1741 . 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 10*7 

things of God, with its natural consequence — persecution. 
"Although to all kings it belongeth to preserve intact the 
Christian faith and church, by their royal authority, to us 
especially it appertains, atIio are called by a certain title 
Defender of the Faith, that we take care that the noxious 
weeds of heresy, and the blemish of evil doctrine, should not be 
privately sown among oiu- people." The baptists are the 
peculiar objects of its provisions. They are said to have 
instilled into the ears of the king's subjects, and into the minds 
of his " ignorant" people, their wicked opinions, their impious 
and impui-e dogmas. Therefore must they be extirpated and 
repressed. The commissioners are then directed to inquire in 
every way for them, to examine witnesses upon oath, to proceed 
with secrecy, and even without the forms of justice."^ Salutary 
penances should be imposed on the penitent, who might then 
be absolved, and re-admitted to the church. But the obstinate 
must be ejected from the congregation of the faithful, and 
exterminated. If the atrocity of their deeds demands it, they 
must be delivered to the secular power. Prisons and chains 
might be freely employed at the discretion of the tribunal. 

Joan Boucher, whose case now comes before us, must have 
been at this time in the hands of her foes ; for on the 30th of 
April, eighteen days only after the issue of the commission, she 
was arraigned for the crime of heresy before this protestant 
inquisition, and her sentence formally pronounced. From 
Cranmer's own archiepiscopal Register we learn, that he himself 
sat as principal judge on the occasion, assisted by Sir Thomas 
Smith, W. Cooke, dean of arches, Hugh Latymer, and Dr. 
Lyell, as the king's " proctors, inquisitors, judges, and com- 
missaries."f 

Joan Boucher had been an active distributor of the proscribed 
translation of the New Testament by Tyndale. The court of 

* Ac sine strepitu, et figura judicii. Rymer, Foed. Tom. vi. pars iJi. 
t Wilkins, Concilia, iv. 42. 



108 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

Henry was the scene of her zealous labors, where she oft 
introduced the sacred volumes unsuspected, tying the precious 
books by strmgs to her apparel.'^ Although ready in the 
scriptures, she could not read them ; no uncommon defect in 
that day, even in people of rank. Much of her time was 
occupied in visiting the prisons, wherein were incarcerated her 
companions in tribulation, whom it was her wont perpetually 
and bountifully to assist.f 

But there was one error Avhich was sufficient to expose her to 
the poisonous breath of calumny, and to the burning flame. 
For this she now appears before the inquisitors, " in the chapel 
of the blessed Mary in St. Paul's." The examinations are long, 
the judges learned, and apparently desirous to save her from 
the stake. She cannot, she will not be convinced that she 
holds any heresy derogatory to the truth. Neither entreaties 
nor threats move her. A good conscience emboldens her. At 
last she utters language grievous to hear, but which smites the 
consciences of her judges with its telling truth. " It is a goodly 
matter to consider your ignorance. It is not long ago since 
you burned Anne Askew for a piece of bread, and yet you came 
yourselves soon after to believe and profess the same doctrine 
for which you burned her. And now forsooth you will needs 
burn me for a piece of flesh, and in the end you will come to 
believe this also, when you have read the scriptures, and 
understood them."| 

With the " fear of God before his eyes," and with invocation 
of the name of Christ, the " reverend father in Christ, Thomas, 
archbishop of Canterbury," with the full approbation of his 
colleagues, now proceeds to pronounce her doom. The sentence 
contains her crime and its punishment. " You believe that the 
word was made flesh in the \Tirgin's belly, but that Christ took 

* Strype's Memor. II. i. 335. 

t Fox Johan. Rerum in Ecclesia Gestarum. Basil, fol. 202. 

t Strype, Mem. II. i. 335. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 109 

tiesh of the virgin 3-ou believe not ; because the flesh of the 
virgin being the outward man, sinfully gotten, and born in sin, 
but the word bv the consent 'of the inward man of the yirgin 
was made flesh. This dogma, with obstinate, obdurate, and 
pertinacious mind, you affiiTn, and not without much haughtiness 
of mien. With wondei-fiil blindness of heart, to this you hold ; 
therefore, for yom- demerits, obstinacy, and contumacy, ag- 
gravated by a wicked and damnable pertinacity, being also 
unwilling to return to the unity of the church, you are adjudged 
a heretic, to be handed to the secular pow"er, to suffer in due 
coui-se of law," and finally the ban of the gTeat excommunication 
is upon you." The inquisitors complete the labors of the day, 
by announcing to the youthful sovereign, through their presi- 
dent, that they had decreed her separation from the Lord's 
flock as a diseased sheep. " And since," say they, " our holy 
mother, the church, hath naught else that she can do on this 
behalf, we leave the said heretic to your royal highness, and to 
the secidar arm, to suffer her deserved punishment.""^ 

Considerable delay, however, occurred before the execution 
of the sentence. We may give the reformers credit for an 
earnest desire to lead Joan Boucher to more connect \iews, but 
must not withhold an expression of just abhorrence at the 
bloody deed, and at the hateful principle on which they acted. 
They had adopted an unsound basis for their reformation, and 
its necessary result was oppression of conscience ; the exercise 
of freedom of thought and judgment upon scripture truth was 
impossible. Ridley of London, and Goodrich of Ely, were 
especially active in their endeavoi-s to reclaim her ; to whom 
must be added, Cramner, Latymer, Lever, Whitehead, and 
Hutchinson.f 

A year within three days was passed in these unavailing 
efforts. Her constancy remained unshaken. On the 2Yth of 

* Wilkins, Concilia, iv. 42, 43. 

t Hutchinson's Works, Biog. Notice, p. iii. Parker Society edit. 



110 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

April, the council issued their warrant to the lord chancellor to 
make out a writ for her execution ; and Cranmer is said by 
Fox to have been most urgent with the young king to affix the 
sign manual to the cruel document. The youthful king hesi- 
tated. Cranmer argued from the law of Moses, by which 
blasphemers were to be stoned to death ; this woman was guilty 
of an impiety in the sight of God, which a prince, as God's 
deputy, ought to punish. With tears, but unconvinced, the 
royal signature was appended.^ Rogers, the proto-martyr of 
Mary's reign, also thought that she ought to be put to death, 
and when urged with the cruelty of the deed, rephed, " that 
burning alive was no cruel death, but easy enough."f He was 
soon called, in the reign of Mary, to test the truth of his own 
remark. 

The bishops had, however, resolved that she shoiild die, and 
on the 2nd of May, 1550, she appeared at the stake in Smith- 
field. Here further efforts were made to shake her confidence. 
To bishop Scory was allotted the duty of preaching to the suf- 
ferer, and to the people, on the occasion. " He tried to convert 
her ; she scofied, and said he lied like a rogue, and bade him, 
' Go read the scriptures.' "J It was doubtless an indignant 
rejection of the shameful misrepresentations which in that hour 
of trial were made of her faith. She clave to those words of 
truth which were her joy and strength, in the moments of her 

* We do not attribute much importance to the attempt to vindicate 
Cranmer at the expense of Fox's veracity ; since if he were not guihy of 
urging the king to sign the warrant of execution, nor present at the 
council when the issue of it was determined upon, he had mercilessly con- 
demned her to death, and acted throughout as the chief inquisitor. Fox 
had too many reasons to withhold the statement were it not true, and it 
can add but little to Cranmer's guilt, that at his persuasion Edward com- 
mitted her to the flames. See Hutchinson's Works, Biog. Notice, 
pp. 4, 5. 

t Pierce's Vindication, p. 34. 

t Strype, Memor. 11. i. 335. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. Ill 

dying agony. She loved and adored the holy and immaculate 
Lamb of God. 

We must look for the lise of the opinion attributed to this 
Christian female to the gi'oss Mariolatry of the Romish church. 
For more than two hundred years the pulpits of Christendom 
had resounded with the conflicting asseverations of the followers 
of St. Dominic and St. Francis, the one maintaining, the other 
denying, the immaculate pm-ity and sinlessness of the mother of 
God.'* The grossest indecencies were uttered in their intemperate 
harangues, and nature's secrets laid open by vulgar hands to the 
vulgar gaze. Thv^ a subject ^vl•apt in profound mystery was 
forced upon thoughtful minds, and it became heresy to doubt 
the common and gainful sentiment of the holy virgin's untainted 
nature. Fox would seem to refer to this when speaking of 
Boucher ; he says, " that she and others appeared to differ 
somewhat from the catholics ;"f and he then instances her views 
on this subject, as the alone feature that marred her Christian 
excellence. At a much later period, in 1620, a baptist distinctly 
avers that it was in order to advance the high estimation in 
which Rome holds the ^^rgin, that the council of Trent declared 
her to be exempt from all sin.J Were it not so, it was argued, 
how was it possible for Jesus Christ to esxiape all contamination ? 
Can a clean thing come out of an unclean ? So then must it 
be that the mother and the son were alike sinless and undefiled. 
It is easy to conceive that a simple mind, in rebutting this view 
of the virgin's purity, might fall into a mode of stating the 
mystery of the incarnation somewhat divergent from the truth, 

* "And of what text the grave (grey ?) friar proveth that our lady was 
without original sin, of the t-:ame shall the black friar prove that she was 
conceived in original sin." Tyndale's Obedience of a Christian Man, 
Preface' Works, i. 195. 

t A catholieis nonnihil dis?entire videbantur. Rerum in Eccles. 
Gest. fol. 202. 

I A description of what Gud, Sec, p. 121 , " 



112 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

if indeed tlie subject be susceptible of accurate statement at 
all.* 

But it is by no means clear tbat Boucher held a sentiment 
every way so objectionable, as lier persecutors would seem to 
affirm. It was certainly stated by herself in a form, if not per- 
fectly intelligible, yet wanting in those oflfensive features which 
are generally put prominently forth as her peculiar demerit. 
" When I," says Mr. Roger Hutchinson, " and my well-beloved 
friend, Thomas Lever, and others, alleged this text against her 
opinions, Semen mulieris conteret caput serpentis, The seed of 
the woman shall grind^ or hreah, the serpenfs head; she 
answered, ' I deny not that Christ is Mary's seed, or the 
woman's seed, nor I deny him not to be a man ; but Mary had 
two seeds, one seed of her faith, and another seed of her flesh, 
and in her body. There is a natural and a corporal seed, and 
there is a spiritual and an heavenly seed, as we may gather of 
St. John, where he saith. The seed of God i-emaineth in him, 
and he cannot sin. And Christ is her seed, but he is become 
man of the seed of her faith and behef, of spiritual seed, not of 
natural seed ; for her seed and flesh was sinful, as the flesh and 
seed of others.' "f Had she been as "ready" in the fathers as 

* St. Anselm taught in the eleventh century, Omnes in peccatis mor- 
tuos, demta solummodo matre Dei. He further says, Quemadmodum 
Deus ea substantia genuit eum, per quem cunctis originem dedit ; ita beata 
virgo Maria de sua carne mundissima peperit ilium. Magdeburg. Cen- 
turiatores, Cent. xi. torn. iii. 335, 34. The unspotted conception of the 
mother of Jesus, was taught in the twelfth century in France ; Duns 
Scotus adhered to this opinion, and with him his followers, the Francis- 
cans, and since that time, the Jesuits. It was opposed by Aquinas and 
the Dominicani, and led to a violent dispute in the church of Rome from 
the 15lh to the 17th centuries. Knapp's Lectures on Christian Theol. 
p. 255. Ward's edit. Still Aquinas taught as follows: Beata virgo, in 
sui sanctificatioiie, fait ab originali peccato purgata ; in filii sui eoncep- 
tion'e, totaliter a fomite mundata ; in sui vero assumptione, ab omni 
miseria liberata. Magd. Centur. Cent. xiii. p. 117, torn. iii. 

t Works, p. 145. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 113 

in the scriptures, she might have added to her acute reply, and 
to the farther perplexity of her visitors, that Augustine also 
saith, " It behoved him to be born of a vu-gin, whom his 
mother's faith, and not natm-al deshe, had conceived."* At all 
events, Cranmer and his fellow-inquisitors, had no such special 
exemption from eiTor on this point, as to entitle them to pro- 
ceed as if uifallibihty was in then* possession, and to attempt 
the exercise of a power over the body and the soul, to commit 
the one and the other to the blazing stake and to the flames of 
hell. 

It would seem that a deshe to intimidate a body daily 
increasing in numbers, hastened the end of this servant of God. 
More rugged methods than were agreeable to the principles of 
th-e gospel were determined upon.f The parhament which 
rose in February, especiaUy exempted the baptists fi-om the 
pardon granted to such as had been concerned in the late rebel- 
hon. Many were in prison. Their opinions on baptism, on 
oaths, and on magistracy, were declared inconsistent with the w^ell- 
being of a Christian commonwealth.^ Eidley, in the visitation 
of his diocese, received particular directions to inquire after the 
baptists. Their assembhes were to be sought out, and a report 
made, whether they separated fi'om the rest of their fellow- 
paiishionei-s for the private use of doctrine, and the administra- 
tion of the sacraments.§ 

Complaints of the existence of some such congregations were 
made to the council from the counties of Essex and Kent. 
Secret assemblies were discovered at Brocking and Feversham, 
and in divers other towns and villages. These congregations 
were supported by the contributions of theii- members, mutual 

* De virgine nasci oportebat, quern fides matris, non libido, conceperat. 
Enchirid. ad Laurent, cap. xxxiv. p. 193. Tauchnitz edit. 
t Strype, Memor. II. i. 335. 
t Strype, Memor. II. i. 291. 
§ Cardwell's Doc. Annals, i. 79. 



114 STRUG (ILES AND TRIUMPHS 

instruction was practised, and fellowship in the gospel regularly 
maintained. Four of their teachers, with a considerable num- 
ber of the people, were accordingly seized. About sixty persons 
were met in a house at Brocldng, when the sheriff interrupted 
theu' assembly. On appearing before the council, they confess- 
ed the j)urpose of their meeting to be " to talk of the scriptures," 
and that they had not gone to communion for two years. 
They were judged by their examiners to hold many evil opinions, 
and to be guilty of several superstitious and erroneous practices, 
and therefore worthy of great punishment. Some were at once 
committed to prison, and others bound in recognizances to the 
king in forty pounds each man, to appear when called upon.* 
For a while they were at liberty, but were soon brought into 
the ecclesiastical court, and examined on no less than forty-six 
articles. These articles related for the most part to the doc- 
trines of original sin and predestination, which the baptists were 
supposed to deny. Their opinions on the former gained them 
the name of Pelagians. 

Mr. Humphrey Middleton was the most eminent of the minis- 
ters thus summoned for conscience' sake before the ecclesiastical 
tribunal. He appears to have remained in prison, by the 
authority of Cranmer, until the last year of Edward's reign. 
To that prelate he is reported to have said, after his condemna- 
tion, — " Well, reverend sir, pass what sentence you think 
fit upon us, but that you may not say you were not forewarned, 
I testify that your own turn will be next." His release from 
prison took place at the king's death, but was of short duration ; 
for in the reign of Mary he was again the victim of intolerance, 
and with some others found in Smithfield a pathway of fire to 
heaven.f 

Mr. Henry Hart was another of the teachers of this interest- 
ing community, and suffered with it the vicissitudes and 

* Strype's Cranmer, p. 335. 

t Pierce's Vindication, p. 35. Fox, Acts and Mon., p. 1 519, edit. 1610. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 115 

dangers of persecution. In the next reign he was also 
imprisoned for heresy, when he made himself conspicuous, not 
only for his rejection of the predestinarian views of some of the 
martyrs, but also for the active controversy he maintained with 
them. We know not whether he too suffered at the stake. 
Greatly is it to be regi-etted that so httle is known of a church, 
considerable for its numbers, yielding its proportion of confessors 
and martp-s to the Roman beast, and which, we are told, was 
the first that made a separation from the church of England, 
hanng gathered congregations of their own.^ 

Bold misrepresentations by professed ministers of peace, 
exciting the rulers of the land to an exterminating warfare 
against the baptists, were not wanting. " Ye are placed in 
authority," writes John Veron to Sir John Gates, "for this our 
county of Essex, in the which, many of these hbertines 
and anabaptists are running in, 'hoker moker,' among the 
simple and ignorant people, to impel and move them to tumult 
and insurrection against the magistrates and rulers of this 
realm. "WTiom I trust if ye once know them, ye will soon 
weed out of this county, to the great good and quiet of the 
king's subjects of the same county and shire."f It was their 
crime, that, sitting upon then- ale-benches, wheresoever they 
dare utter then* poison, they taught the wi'ong of the attempt 
to unite things civil and di\ine. Men who held that magistracy 
was a civil ordinance of God, and to be obeyed in all civil 
affaii-s, were guilty of contention, sedition, and ti-eason, when 
resisting its entrance into the church of God, seeing "it is 
neither profitable nor yet necessary to a Christian common- 
weal." " Which," continues Veron, " would God it were 

» Strype, Memor. II. i. 369. 

t A moste necessary and frutefull Dialogue between y^ seditious 
Libertia or rebel Anabaptist, and the true obedient Christian, &.c. Trans- 
lated out of Latin into English, by Jho'» Veron Senonys. Imprinted at 
Worcester, anno 1551. 



116 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

diligently weeded out by the magistrates and rulers, that these 
most pestiferous anabaptists and libertines, might once both feel 
and know, that they do not bear the sword dehvered unto them 
of God in vain."* 

The commission of 1549 was renewed, with a few changes 
in the commissioners, on the 18th of January, 1551, Cranmer 
still holding the place of chief-inquisitor. Under its provisions 
George van Pare surrendered his hfe at the stake. He was 
charged with a denial of the deity of our Lord, " that Christ 
is not very God." On the 6th of April, he passed through the 
same forms of trial as Boucher, and was in like manner con- 
demned. On the 25th, he also was burnt in Smithfield. He 
was a man of exemplary life, passing much time in acts of 
devotion. He suffered with great constancy of mind, embracing 
the fagots and the stake that were about to consume him.f 

These acts are an indelible blot on the memory of Cranmer, 
and have been referred to by the Romanists as a palhation of 
the enormities of the following reign. But it is said in reply, 
that no catholic suffered for rehgious opinions during the rule 
of the youthful and gentle Edward. It was a time of peaceful 
progress, when men might worship God as truth and scripture 
required. This however, if true, cannot excuse the persecutions 
that did occur, of which ample proof has been given ; nor in the 
least exonerate Cranmer from the guilt of being their active and 
constant promoter. Other reasons, however, than the pacific 
disposition of the king, or the supposed unwiUingness of 
Cranmer to resort to these cruel methods of propagating his 
faith, existed to render a catholic persecution at once impracti- 
cable and dangerous. No credit is due either to Edward or his 
council for their forbearance. It was a constrained lenity, and 
owed nothing of its propriety and worth to the generous or 

* Grindal also appears as a persecutor of the Essex baptists. Ridley's 
Works, p. 331. Parker Society. 

t Doc. Annals, i, 91. Wilkins, iv. 43. Neal, i. 42. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 117 

noble temper of the king's ad\isers ; their principles were 
opposed to the existence of any faith but such a one as coincided 
-vYith their own. The cathohc party was too strong and too 
large to permit them to venture on the impolitic course of 
coercion. Eeformed opinions had as yet but little hold upon 
that portion of the community in whose hands lay the wealth 
and power of the country. Romish practices were in many 
places used side by side with the new " laudable ceremonies." 
The nation did not feel itself reformed, and the leaders of the 
movement saw the impossibility of any other than a gi-adual 
submission to theu' imposed formularies of faith. Still there 
was no intention to bear the presence of Romanism beyond a 
certain point. If it ceased to be passive, it was at once met 
TVTith stern threatening and reproof. Gardiner for his remon- 
strances was thrown into piison, and Bonner for his noncon- 
formity deprived. 

The insm-rections in Devonshire and Norfolk, which had 
chiefly in ^iew the re-estabhshment of the old rehgion, were 
put down with much loss of hfe and great severity ; and a long 
and elaborate document, from the pen of Cranmer, was issued 
in reply to their articles, to justify the innovations that had been 
introduced. The omnipotence of the state in spiritual as in ci\ii 
affairs, was the fertile parent of these sanguinary deeds, and 
Cranmer wielded it to that end, without shuddering or fear. 

The same relentless rigor followed the baptists to' the end. 
Towards the close of the last year of Edward's reign, the arch- 
bishop was again in motion to examine a number of persons 
who were said to have lately appeared in Kent. Of his 
I researches we know nothing. We cannot suppose that the 
I example of then- probable friend and companion, Joan Boucher, 
I in any way repressed their zeal for the truth, or hindered its 
, successfril propagation.* It was not unnecessary that their 
i testimony should be heard, since in the hturgy, now put forth, 

* Strype, Mem. II. ii. 19, 209. 



118 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

it was declared that he who refuseth the traditions of the church, 
hurteth the authority of the civil magistrate.* Against this 
pernicious principle the baptists nobly protested, and claimed 
for the church of God that liberty to receive laws from Christ 
alone which is its inalienable right. 

The articles of religion, issued just previous to the king's 
death, are said to have been " principally designed to vindicate 
the English reformation from that slur and disgrace which the 
anabaptists' tenets had brought upon the reformation."! They 
could, therefore, have been neither few nor unimportant, to have 
merited this deference to their sentiments in the fundamental 
documents of the English church. 

* King Edward's Liturgies, p. 535. 

+ Lewis, Brief Hist, of the EngHsh Anabaptists, p. 54. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 119 



SECTION IV. 

MARY. 

The reformed doctrines liad not obtained such a predomi- 
nance in the popular mind as to render long doubtful the 
succession of Mary to the crown. A nation's opinions cannot 
be changed in a few short years, much less its rehgious life. 
The protestant council of the late king failed therefore in their 
illegal attempt to place the amiable, but unfortunate. Lady Jane 
Grey upon the throne, and Mary, without bloodshed, entered 
upon the exercise of her regal functions. 

Her fears had, however, forced from her the promise of per- 
mitting hberty of conscience. She assured the men of Suffolk, 
that there should be no alteration in the established worship. 
To the lord mayor and aldermen of London, on her arrival at 
the Tower, she declared, that while her own conscience was 
stayed in mattei-s of religion, she meant not to compel or strain 
her people's consciences.* But on the 18th of August, by pro- 
clamation, it was announced, that although she observed, and 
would maintain, the religion of her infancy, and be glad if it 
were received by her subjects, yet she did not intend to compel 
them to embrace it, " till pubhc order should be taken in it by 
common consent."f This proclamation was an advance upon 
her earlier promises, and darkly intimated the coming severities. 
She could, however, appeal to her brother's example, as a prece- 

* Neal, i. 59. Price, Hist, of Nonconf. i. 99. 
t Tierney's Dodd. ii. 57. 



120 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

dent for the sttspension of all public preaching and scriptural 
exposition, which she proceeded to command : she therein only 
imitated the applauded pohcy of the reformers themselves. 
The first act of Mary's regal supremacy, -was merely the 
exercise of a sovereignty over conscience, which they recog- 
nized, and had often employed.* 

All the deprived catholic bishops, Gardiner, Bonner, Tunstall, 
Day, and Heath, were restored to their sees. Six other bishops, 
who had professed themselves protestants in the reign of 
Edward, conformed to the new order of things. The rest were 
deprived, either for being married, or for preaching doctrines 
unpleasing to the ruling party.f The catholics hastened to 
enjoy the public exercise of their worship. The mass was again 
restored, images and altars set up, the Latin service revived, 
and sermons, which irritated more than they convinced, were 
preached in maintenance of the old ceremonies.J The fii'st 
session of parliament was opened with a high mass in Latin on 
the 5th of October, and it immediately proceeded to reverse 
the laws which obstructed the full establishment of popery. 

Convocation went hand in hand with the houses of parha- 
ment. But few protestants were to be found in that assembly ; 
only five, of whom archdeacon Philpot was the chief, appeared 
to defend the innovations of Edward, or to plead for their 
continuance. Great numbers of the more eminent of the 
reformers had withdrawn to various places abroad. From thi-ee 
to eight hundred are reckoned to have thus expatriated them- 
selves fi'om their native land.§ 

The change did not much affect the common people. They 
were ignorant and vicious; corruption of manners prevailed 
throughout the nation ; the spreading light of the gospel had 
not penetrated the masses of society, nor wrought in them a 
purer morality. Unmoved by religious considerations, they 

* Collier, vi. 12. t Dodd, ii. 57. 

t Fuller, ii. 382, 383. § Ibid. pp. 56, 58. Collier, vi. 19. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 121 

had rejoiced only in the removal of the restraints and exactions 
to Ts-hich, under the dominion of Rome, they had been subject.* 
The transference from one faith to another, was to them an easy 
matter ; neither class of religionists demanded the obedience of 
the heart ; papist and protestant were both content with an 
outward observance of their respective rites. The upper classes 
had acquiesced in, nay coveted, the revolutions of former reigns, 
for they had brought to them an mcrease of wealth. Tliis was 
the only obstacle to an immediate reconciliation with Rome ; 
the spohatoi*s of abbeys and monasteries feared a resumption of 
church property, an enforced restitution of their sacrilegious 
spoil. The houses of pai'hament therefore hesitated to acknow- 
ledge the supremacy of the pope, and it was not until Cardinal 
Pole, in the following year, by permission of the pope, sur- 
rendered this point, and gave secm*e possession to the holdei's of 
church lands, that the queen was allowed to lay down the title 
of supreme head of the chm'ch of England, although she 
regarded it as profane.f 

It was on the 30th of JS'ovember, 1554, St. Andrew's day, 
that the re-union of the nation to Rome was solemnly recog- 
nised, and its reconciliation effected. Cardinal Pole then 
appeared in parhament. His credentials, the briefe and bulls 
which authoiized him, were read before the assembled Lords 
and Commons. He sought by moving words to con&m their 
resolution, to awaken repentance. England was a prodigal son, 
he said, who ha\dng wasted his spiritual substance, and des- 
troyed all his ancestral monuments of piety, now returned to his 
father's hoi^e, to the centre of unity, the see of Rome. If 
heaven rejoiced over one repenting sinner, how much greater 
must be the angehc raptures, when a whole kingdom lay 
prostrate in theh sight I Both houses knelt before the repre- 
sentative of the \'icar of Christ ; they besought God for mercy 
to themselves, and to the kingdom, by the hands of his servant ; 

• Strype's Cranmer, p. 447. Short, p. 192. t Dodd, ii. 65. 

6 



122 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

and, in the plenitude of his apostolic jurisdiction, the cardinal 
uttered the following absolution : — " Our Lord Jesus Christ, 
which with his most precious blood hath redeemed and washed 
us from all our sins and iniquities, that he might purchase unto 
himself a glorious spouse, without spot or wrinkle, and whom 
the Father hath appointed Head over all his church, he, by his 
mercy, absolve you : and we, by apostoHc authority, given unto 
us by the most holy lord, Pope Julius III., his \dcegerent in earth, 
do absolve and deliver you, and every one of you, with the 
whole realms and dominions thereof, from all heresy and schism, 
and from all and every judgment, censures, and pains, for that 
cause incurred ; and also, we do restore you again unto the 
unity of our mother, the holy church, as in our letters more 
plainly it shall appear, in the name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Both the houses of parhament 
answered aloud, "Amen! Amen!" Tears filled every eye; 
many embraced each other in the gladness of their joy. 
Ambassadors were despatched to Rome to tender the obedience 
of the nation, and a jubilee over the w^hole church was 
proclaimed.^* 

It still remained to abrogate certain other laws relating to 
the supremacy. So soon as the houses of parliament were 
assured of the inviolabihty of the abbey and church lands, the 
acts passed since the twentieth year of Henry the Eighth, the 
year of schism, were summarily repealed. On that condition 
alone would they acknowledge the supreme jurisdiction of the 
Roman pontiff. Self-interest reigned paramount, and avarice again 
decided ^the national creed. Consideration must be shown to- 
wards the powerful and wealthy spoliatore of the church's goods ; 
but none to those tender and scrupulous consciences whose wealth 
lay in the possession of the truth. The laws against heretics were 
revived, the enormities of Lollardy were to be suppressed, and 
heretical preachei-s arrested. When deHvered into the sheriffs' 

• Dodd. ii. 62, 63. 



1 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 123 

hands by their inquisitoi-s, they were " then, on a high place, 
before the people, to be biu-nt."* 

Thus the way was prepared for the exercise of those san- 
guinary cruelties which have rendered infamous the reign of 
Maiy ; so gi-eat and numerous as to eclipse the feebler, but not 
less execrable severities of the parties who suffered them. 
" The system which had slowly grown out of the ignorance and 
supei'stition of mankind, was restored to its forfeited supremacy ; 
and afforded another opportunity of developing its character, 
and of pro\'ing, more completely than ever it had yet done, its 
incompatibihty with freedom of thought and the wide extension 
of knowledge."! 

The feast of reconcihation being passed wdth joj^ul thanks- 
giAdngs (Jan. 25th), the machinery of persecution was at once set 
in motion. On the 28th the cardinal issued a commission to 
search and examine all preachers of heresy, and commit them 
to prison. Commissionei"s and inquisitors went thi-ough the 
realm, and great numbei's, from the counties of Kent, Essex, 
Norfolk, and Suffolk, were apprehended, sent to London, and 
immured in its pestilential dungeons, to await the fiery trial.J 

The restored church of Rome proclaimed at the earhest 
moment her sanguinary pm-poses, and, without delay, sought 
by teiTor to repress rebeUion against its spiritual authority. 
She chose for her gi'ound of procedure a dogma repulsive to 
common sense, and therefore the better calculated to test the 
blind obedience she required. A simpler course could not have 
been selected to bring to the trial a man's faith in the word of 
God, or in the dicta of the church. Gardiner took the lead in 
this warfare upon conscience, and on the 28th of January, in 
the church of St. Mary Oveiies, in Southwark, summoned the 
first of the martji-s before him. Rogere and Bradford, bishop 

* Statutes at Large, 1 and 2 Phil, and Mariee, c. vi. and viii. 

t Price,!. 107. 

t Fox, iii. 18. edit. 1641. 



124 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

Hooper and Dr. Taylor, appeared; they were examined, 
excommunicated, and remanded to prison.* On the 4th of 
February, Rogers was led to the stake, and breathed his last 
triumphantly amid the suffocating flames, Bradford was 
respited to the month of July. Hooper laid down his hfe with 
great firmness and joy, five days after Rogers. And, on the 
same day, Taylor passed through the consuming flame at 
Hadley in Suffolk."! 

These sanguinary measures had not been adopted without 
considerable discussion among the councillors of the queen. 
On the side of lenity, it is said, were the queen, king Phihp, 
and cardinal Pole ; Gardiner and Bonner led the opposite party. 
Many things had occurred to irritate the ruHng ecclesiastics. 
Actions at once indefensible and impoHtic proceeded from the 
reformers. They had even gone so far as to justify treason, and 
had looked with favor on Wyatt's insurrection. The queen's 
preacher was shot at in the pulpit at St. Paul's Cross ; her 
chaplains mobbed, and pelted with stones. The ecclesiastical 
tonsure was made a mockery, a dog's head being shaved in 
contempt ; and a cat with a wafer in her paws was hung upon 
a gallows at Cheapside, to ridicule the sacrament. One parson 
Rose publicly prayed, " that God would either tm-n the queen's 
heart, or shorten her days."J 

Timely severities might also complete the work of re-union, 
so auspiciously begun ; cruelty to the few might strike terror in 
the many, and fix their wavering faith. Thei'e was much to 
countenance this idea. The leading reformers had fled, except- 
ing only a very small number, whose death at Oxford and 
elsewhere was sufficient to mark the equity and sternness of 
the resolve. The professed adherents of the reformation were 
but a httle band, and confined to a few localities. It would 

* CollieF, vi. 105. 

t Macintosh, Mary, p. 290. Collier, vi. 107. 

t Collier, vi. 82, 93, 104. Dodd, ii. 97. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIKEKTY. 125 

seem no difficult nor tedious employ, to extirpate a heresy 
whose roots had not yet struck deeply into the popular soil. 
It was, moreover, perfectly consonant with the maxims of a 
church, out of which there is no salvation, and had for centuries 
been sanctioned by success. Such or similar reasons weighed 
with the queen, when, on the intimation of her council that 
they had determined to resort to persecution, she rephed, 
" Touching the punishment of heretics we thinketh it ought to 
be done without rashness, not leaving in the meanwhile to do 
justice to such, as, by learning, would seem to deceive the 
simple : and the rest so to be used, that the people might well 
perceive them not to be condemned without just occasion, 
whereby they shall both imderstand the truth, and beware to 
do the like. And especially within London, I would wish none 
to be burnt, without some of the council's presence, and both 
there and every where good sermons at the same."* 

.The fii-st example awakened general disgust, which was so 
far effectual as to call forth the day following the death of 
Rogei's, a disclaimer, on the part of the court, of any participa- 
tion in the horrid transaction, by one Alphonso di Castro, a 
Spanish friar. He inveighed against the bishops for bm-ning 
men, saying plainly that scriptm-e taught them not to burn 
any for conscience ; but on the contrary, that they should be 
permitted to hve, in hopes of their conversion.f The spirit of 
intolerance seemed for a moment abashed, but was not 
quenched. The sermon was plainly a stratagem, to remove the 
odium from the queen, and especially from PhiHp, who was 
extremely anxious to ingratiate himself vdth the people. In a 
few weeks the fires were again lighted up. The persecution 
continued until the end of the reign, when two hundred and 
seventy persons had perished in the flames of martyi'dom. 

The ravages of the persecutors were confined to a few 
districts of the country. At least two hundi*ed were victims of 

» Collier, vi. 85. t Fox, iii. 139. 



126 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

the dark-minded and bloody Bonner. The northern dioceses 
were free fi'om the fiery scourge, as were also some of the 
western. By far the largest number of martyi's was drawn 
from the dioceses of Canterbury, London, N'orwich, Rochester, 
and Chichester. They were the foci of the reformed move- 
ment ; from those places the sufferers of former times had come, 
and there it was that gospel-light penetrated farthest into the 
middle and lower ranks of society. The humblest conditions 
of life yielded a much more than proportionate number ; "an 
instance of the power of conscience to elevate the lowest of 
human beings above themselves, and is a proof of the cold- 
blooded cruelty of the persecutors, who, in order to spread 
terror through every class, laboriously dug up victims from the 
darkest corners of society, whose errors might have hoped for 
indulgence fi'om any passion less merciless than bigotry."* 

* Fuller, ii. Macintosh, Mary, ch. xv. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 121 



SECTION y. 

THE BAPTISTS. 

By the aid of the histonan Strype, we discover that not a 
few baptists were entangled in the meshes of the sanguinary 
foe. His information was chiefly gleaned from the papers of 
the English martyrologist, and it is much to be regretted that 
from a deshe to please the ruhng party, or a repugnance to 
acknowledge the merit of those who came not up to his standard 
of orthodoxy, Mr. Fox has either omitted altogether any refer- 
ence to their suffering's, or when he has mentioned them, has 
suppressed those particulars which would enable us to identify 
them as belonging to this obnoxious sect. It will be remem- 
bered, that in the previous reign, a congi*egation of baptists had 
been discovered, assembhng as they might find convenient, at 
various place in the counties of Kent and Essex, but especially 
at Fevei-sham and Bocking. Many of its members were then 
immured in prison, with their two pastoi-s, Mr. Henry Hart and 
Mr. Humphrey ^Middleton, but were probably released on the 
death of Edward. In 1554, those two preachers were again 
incarcerated, with two other ministei-s of the same people.* 

On the 12th of July, 1555, Mr. Middleton was burnt at 
Canterbuiy, with three others. His examinations were on the 
usual test-doctrine, transubstantiation. He averred that there was 
no real presence in the mass, that both the sacred emblems 
ought to be administered to the communicants, and in the 

» Strype's Cranmer, p. 502. 



128 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

English tongue. It was with difficulty that he was brought to 
answer the questions of his examiners, but he assured them, that 
he believed in his own God, saying, " My living God, and no 
dead God." Bound to two stakes, he and his fellow-sufferers 
passed into the presence of the Lamb from amid the devouring 
flame. Like true soldiers of Jesus Christ, they gave a constant 
testimony to the truth of his holy gospel.'^ 

Mr. Hart, with many others, was imprisoned in the King's 
Bench, where also were confined several, who, under the name 
of gospellers, adhered to the religion established by Edward the 
Sixth. Among these prisoners of Jesus Christ arose consider- 
able contention and strife. The eternal predestination of the 
elect, and the ability of man to keep God's commandments, 
were the topics which excited their unseemly divisions. The 
baptists were distinguished by the epithets of free-willers and 
Pelagians. The martyr Bradford entered deeply into the sub- 
ject with them, and more especially with Hart. The latter 
wi'ote a piece in defence of his sentiments, to which Bradford 
replied ; in a letter to Cranmer, Eidley, and Latymer, at 
Oxford, he communicates his fears, and sends them both Hart's 
book and his own. He conceives that these men confounded 
the effects of salvation with its cause ; on the matter of free- 
will he deems them plain papists, yea Pelagians. They also 
utterly contemned all learning. Their holy life, for " they 
were men of strict and holy lives," commended them to the 
world, and rendered their sentiments the more dangerous. To 
his letter were appended the names of Bishop Ferrar, Taylor, 
and Philpot. Some yielded to his persuasions ; to the rest he 
showed uniform kindness, alleviating the distress of their 
imprisonment, from funds confided to his care ; for " that he 
was persuaded of them, that they feared the Lord, and there- 
fore he loved them." Others dealt not so gently with their 
erring brethren. Archdeacon Philpot was among their oppo- 

* Fox, iii. 363, 373, 377. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 129. 

nents. In a letter to John Careless, he calls them scliismatics, 
arrogant and self-willed, Wind scatterers, contentious babblers, 
perverse and intractable/'^ 

In a long letter to a friend in Newgate, Philpot endeavored 
to estabhsh the truth of infant baptism. Infants, he says, were 
included in the command of our Lord, Go ye into all nations^ 
&c. ; but especially had they the same covenant-right enjoyed 
by the posterity of Abraham. Endently feeling these groimds 
somewhat unstable, he earnestly exhorts his correspondent " to 
submit to the judgment of the church, for the better under- 
standing the articles of our faith, and of the doubtful sentences 
of scriptm-e. Therefore," he continues, " let us believe as they 
have taught us of the scripture, and be at peace with them, 
according as the true cathohc church is at this day."f To such 
a sm-render of imderstanding and conscience, the baptists were 
and ever have been opposed, inasmuch as they conceive that the 
marks of infalhbihty have never yet been discovered, engraven 
by di^^ne skill, either on the " holy Roman church," or on that 
constituted by the legislative enactments of King Edward and 
his successors on the British throne. 

Singular, too, is the harmony of sentiment existing between 
our reformer and his cruel persecutor, Bonner, who this same 
year (1555) put forth his book of homihes. Their arrows are 
drawn from the same quiver, and winged on earth, not in 
heaven. Thus in the homily on the authority of the church, in 
almost the same lang-uage, doth this blood-stained hero of 
Rome's infalhbihty proceed to say : "I exhort and beseech all 
you, good Chiistian people, that in all doubts, opinions, and 
controversies, ye would resort to the holy church, and there 
learn what the same cathohc church hath beheved and taught, 
from time to time, concerning doubts or controversies." And 
in the exposition of the sacrament of baptism, he gives especial 
warning against the error of the baptists ; for, says he, " certain 

* Strype's Cranmer, o02, 503, 907. t Fox, iii. pp. 606, 607. 



.130 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

heresies have risen up and sprung in our days, against the 
christening of infants ;" which elsewhere he teaches, that " the 
most wholesome authority of the chm*ch doth command."* 

While, then, our reformers endeavored to reduce the cathohc 
chm'ch to the standard of scripture, appealing to its doctrines 
and honoring to some extent its commands ; yet were they not 
free from a papal dread of too much light. They feared the 
perfect communication of the word of God to the laity, and 
dreaded the action of free minds on its contents. "To the 
unlearned and laity," says Roger Hutchinson, in 1552, "the 
pubhshing them without interpretation is a like matter as if a 
man would give to young children whole nuts ; which, when 
they have tumbled long up and down in their mouths, and 
licked the hard shell, being not able to come to their sweetness, 
at last they spit out, and cast away both the shell and the 
kernel. The eternal God, to help the infirmity of man's capa- 
city and understanding herein, hath ordained two honorable and 
most necessary offices in his church : the office of preaching, 
and the office of reading and interpreting." To these must the 
humble man resort ; so great is the hardness and difficulty of 
holy wi'it, that without a teacher none can wade through it.f 

Great therefore was the dismay of Eidley and others, when, 
as he says, these imprisoned baptists rejected an open, that is, 
an established ministry, as not necessary ; when the sacraments 
were regai'ded as only " badges and tokens of Christian men's 
profession:" or, as Ridley puts it, they made no difference 
between the Lord's table and their own ; yet more amazed was 
he, that they refused to attend the ministry, or submit to any 
Christian rite from the hands of any clergyman, however pure 
his succession, who was not known as a man of God by his 
holy life, and the fruits of piety. In such cases of schismatic 

* A profitable and necessarye doctrine, with certain homelyes adioyned 
thervnto, set forth by Edmunde, Byshope of London, &c., mdlv. 
t Works, pp. 91, 94. Parkor Society's edit. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 131 

folly, Ridley counselled a resort to coercion. Since con\'iction 
could not be produced by pei-suasion, force must be applied. 
To quote the more gentle Hutchinson ; " If there be any sus- 
pected to be an anabaptist, I would to God well-learned 
preachei-s were authorized to compel and call such to render 
account of their faith — if it were found anabaptistical, that the 
preacher enter into disputation with him, and openly comdct 
him by the scriptures and elder fathers ; and if he remain 
obstinate, the same preacher to excommunicate him ; and then 
to meddle no further with him, but give knowledge thereof to 
the temporal magistrate, which, for civil consideration, may 
punish him with imprisonment, death, or otherwise."*^ Hence 
the opprobrious epithets, the passionate language, the bitter 
invective, which marked the controversies of these fellow- 
sufferers for the truth. 

Not the least among the opponents of the baptists was Mr. 
John Careless, an eminent martyr, and their fellow-prisoner in 
the King's Bench. He had much conference with them, but 
failed, to his great grief, in convincing them. In 1556, Careless 
wrote a confession of his faith, especially favoring absolute 
predestination against free-will. It was generally concurred in 
by the protestant prisoners in Newgate and the King's Bench, 
where he lay. A copy fell into Mr. Hart's hands, and on the 
back of it he wrote his sentiments. His colleague Mr. Cham- 
berlain also wi'ote against it. Strype mentions only one article 
of this document, from which may be inferred the opposing 
sentiment of the baptists. " That the second book of Common 
Prayer, set forth in king Edward's days, was good and godly ; 
but that the church of Chiist hath authority to enlarge and 
diminish things in the same book, so far forth as it is agreeable 
to scripture." This reply of Hart fall into the hands of the 
cathohc party, and gave rise to scoffs at the divisions and 

« Works, p. 201. Ridley's Works, pp. 9, 264, 121, 129, 141, 142. 
Strype, Memor. III. ii. 454. 



132 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

various opinions of the professors of the gospel. It ended in 
the disownment of the baptists by the gospellers, and a breach 
of all intercourse and unity between them.* 

The friends of the prisoners sought to comfort and cheer 
them by letters. One of these is preserved. Strype thinks the 
writer was Mr. Hart ; but it is evidently wi'itten from the 
country to those in London who were suffering for the truth ; 
.ind, as Mr. Hart was one of them, it must have come from some 
other person. The writer prays that his imprisoned friends may 
be endued with all wisdom and spiritual understanding. He 
urges them to walk as the children of the light, and to be 
fruitful in all good works ; to have no fellowship with unright- 
eousness, to walk circumspectly, to " use well the time, for it 
is a miserable time, yea, and such a time that if it were possi- 
ble, the very chosen and elect should be brought into errors ;" 
therefore, they must watch, search diligently the scriptures, and 
take gladly the yoke of Christ upon them. The writer then 
proceeds to argue from the precepts given by Christ to keep his 
commandments, and to love God with all the heart, soul, mind, 
and strength, that we are able to observe them ; that God has 
given us understanding and reason for the purpose ; and that 
hfe and death are set before men freely to choose. He con- 
cludes : " Wherefore, dearly beloved, let us look earnestly to 
the commandments of the Lord, and let us go about to keep 
them, before we say that we be not able to keep them. Let us 
not play the slothful servants, but let us be willing to go about 
to do them, and then no doubt God shall assist and strengthen 
us, that we shall bring them to conclusion. And always, dearly 
beloved, have the fear of the Lord before your eyes, for whoso 

feareth the Lord walketh in the right path, and at the last 

God shall reward every man according to his deeds."f 

How these followers of Jesus fared after this period, we have 

* Strype's Cranmer, p. 505. 

t Strype, Memor. III. ii. 321—329. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 133 

no means of ascertaining. The last mention of their perse- 
cutions in this reign, is that of the sudden recall of certain 
inquisitors, who in the year 1558 visited Essex, and especially 
the district around Colchester, for the purpose of feeding the 
languishing flames of the martyr's pile, with fresh living fuel. 
With regret the commissioners obeyed the Council's commands. 
" Would to God," they write, " the honorable Council saw the 
face of Essex as we do see ; we have such obstinate heretics, 
anabaptists, and other unruly persons here, as never was heard 
of. .... If we should give it off in the midst, w^e should set the 
country in such a roar, that my estimation, and the residue of 
the commissioners, shall be for ever lost."* 

The country began to gi'oan over the ashes of the dead, and 
to regard with horror the cruelties of bigotry and Rome. On 
the l7th of November Mary died, and this darkest period of 
our national annals, and of the reformed faith in this land, 
yielded to a brighter day. 

* Strype, Memor. III. ii. 125, 126. 



134 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 



SECTION VI. 

ELIZABETH. 

The reign of Elizabeth was an era of conflict. Light 
struggled with darkness, and by the hands of its professed 
friends was shut up in the dark lanthorn of a state-estabhsh- 
ment. The world became enthroned in the church, and 
pohtical considerations were of more importance than the laws 
of the King of kings. "Every moral principle was set at 
nought,- and every crooked path of state-expediency was 
trodden." * The law of the Lord, that perfect law, might be 
obeyed only so far as it was transcribed into the statute-book 
of the realm. 

Immediately upon her accession (Nov. iTth, 1558), the queen 
gave an earnest of the course she intended to pursue. Cecil's 
advice for reformation was accepted. Protestants were intro- 
duced into the council, and cathohcs excluded from it. On 
Sunday, the 20th, she listened to the gospel from the lips of 
Dr. Bill ; but imprisoned Christopherson, " the brawling bishop 
of Chichester," who, on the following Sunday, with great 
vehemence and freedom, refuted the reformers' doctrine as the 
" invention of new men and heretics !" f She at once assumed 
the controverted authority of the state in religious matters, by 
issuing a proclamation forbidding all preaching and exposition 

* Ruber's English Universities, i. 294. 

t Macintosh, Hist, of Eng. Eliz. ch. xvi. Zurich Letters, i. 4, 6. 
Parker Society. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 135 

of holy scripture, till the decision of parliament should be known. 
The people might, however, read — only read — the epistles, the 
gospels, and the commandments, in English ; and were besides 
allowed to pray in the language of the Lord's prayer, the litany, 
and the creed. For a while, masses, and all the abominations 
of popery, were sanctioned, the rubric of the missals and 
bre\T[aries followed, and the zeal of the reformers repressed. 
But their private meetings were connived at, while the parish 
chm-ches were closed against them. * 

With great gladness the exiles returned from their places of 
sojourn abroad, full of hope and expectation. "The most 
merciful God," says one of them, " has \dsited our affliction, and 
wrought out the redemption of his people." f Halcyon days 
were come ; the lointer ivas past, the rain was over and gone. 
Martyr-blood had fertilized the soil, and now flowers bright 
with the beauty of holiness would appear. A new star had 
arisen to lead the Lord's people, and to shed beams of grace 
upon the church of the hving God. J Visions of happiness too 
early destroyed by the stern realities of the strife awaiting the 
wearied pilgrims ! Within two months of the queen's accession, 
Jewel wrote the ominous words, " I only wish that our party 
may not act with too much worldly prudence and pohcy in the 
cause of God." § 

"AYorldly prudence and policy," did, however, fi'om this 
time, control the ecclesiastical movements of the hierarchy and 
the state ; rehgion was made to worship at their shrine. The 
queen became v/onderfully afraid of innovations. " She is, 

* Documentary Annals, i. 176. Collier, vi. 200. Zurich Lett. ii. 29. 

t Sir Ant. Cook to Bullinger. Zurich Lett. ii. 1. 

X " God, whose property is to thow his mercies, then greatest when 
they are nearest, to be utterly despaired of, cau?ed in the depth of 
discomfort and darkness a most glorious star to arise, and on her head 
settled the crown." — Hooker, book iv. sect. 14. Hanbury's edit. 
vol. i. p. 327. 

§ Jewel to Martyr, Zurich Lett. i. 8, 10, 



186 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

however, prudently, and firmly, and piously, following up ter 
purpose, thougli somewhat more slowly than we could wish." * 
The purer-minded reformers were shocked to see the crucifix 
still erect in the queen's chapel, and much more, when, hahited 
in the golden vestments of the papacy, with candles lighted 
before the image, three of the new bishops ministered at the 
table of the Lord, as priest, deacon, and subdeacon, "without 
any sermon." " What hope," exclaims the pious Sampson, " is 
there of any good, when our party are disposed to look for 
religion in these dumb remnants of idolatry, and not fi'om the 
preaching of the lively word of God." f Many longed impa- 
tiently for further and more active progress in the establishment 
of the gospel. They chided the wariness, the defiberation, the 
prudence of the royal counsels, " as if," says Jewel, " God 
himself could scarce retain his authority without our ordinances 
and precautions ; so that it is idly and scurrilously said, that as 
heretofore Christ was cast out by his enemies, so he is now kept 
out by his friends." I The people were disgusted with the 
insolence and cruelty of the papists ; many called them butchers 
to their face. They thirsted for the gospel exceedingly ; the 
consuming fire of the martyr-pile had well nigh burnt up every 
green herb, and by its scorching power rendered arid many a 
spot once fertilized by evangehc truth ; but the waters of life 
were not yet to irrigate the parched ground. The sanction of 
law was necessary te let loose the pent-up floods of the ever- 
lasting springs.§ 

But will the law, or the lawgivers, grant liberty to the fi'ee 
utterance of God's truth ? Are the sighings of the people to be 
heard ? Will the breeze now rustling in the forest tops bring 
the refreshing rain, the fertilizing shower of heavenly doctrine, 

» Jewel to Martyr, Mar. 20, 1559. Zurich Lett. i. 11. 
t Sampson to Martyr. Zurich Lett. i. 63. 
t Jewel to Martyr, Apr. 14, 1559. Zurich Lett, i 17. 
§ lb. i. 31, 18. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 137 

flooding the land \\itli life and peace ? Let us see. Ten days 
after the queen's coronation, the Lords and Commons, her fii-st 
parhament, assembled. She appeared amongst them. By the 
mouth of the lord keeper, Su' Nicholas Bacon, she intimated her 
desire to unite her ^Deople in one uniform order of religion. 
The history of all ages, he said, instructed them to submit to 
exemplaiy pimishment all undue worehip and superstition, 
especially atheism and immorahty. Good king Hezekiah, and 
noble queen Esther, were eminent examples of zeal to discharge 
error, and to reform what was amiss. These her majesty would 
emulate, and strive thus to recommend herself to the approbation 
of almighty God. ^^ 

By the fet act of the ■ session, all jurisdiction over the state 
ecclesiastical was restored to the crown. With the title of 
Supreme Governor, the queen was invested with supreme 
power over the church. The whole compass of church disciphne 
was transfeiTed to her. At her bidding, the court of high 
commission, in part clerical and in part lay, might proceed to 
reform every abuse, to judge error, to pronounce the doom of 
heresy, and to punish all schisms, contempts, and offences, as 
they might think fit. Heresy was defined to be any departm-e 
from the canonical scriptures, or from the faith established by 
the fii'st four general councils ; also, any dogma, which, at any 
futm-e time, should be adjudged heresy by the parhament of the 
realm, with the assent of the clergy in convocation. This 
profane assumption of dominion over conscience was fruiher 
enlarged by a provision, that none should dare to adjudge the 
order or detennination of any rehgious matter, made by 
authority of parhament, to be an error, heresy, schism, or 
schismatical opinion.f 

On this broad foundation of infalhbihty, the Houses laid their 
second act, to pro\ide for the uniformity of common prayer and 

* Collier, vi. 204. 

t Statutes at Large, 1 Eliz. c. i. vol. vi. p. 107. 



188 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

service in the cliiircli, and administration of the sacraments. 
They adopted the second service book of Edward the Sixth, 
with some changes to make it more palatable to the cathohcs. 
" This holy little book," was> now restored to the church of 
England. " We embraced that book," continues the zealous 
bishop of Ely, " with open arms, and not without thanks to 
God, who had preserved to us such a treasure, and restored it 
to us in safety."* Like the first statute, this, with its pre- 
scribed liturgy, was guarded by penalties. After the ensuing 
feast of John the Baptist, all the inhabitants of the realm were 
diligently and faithfully, on Sundays and feast days, to appear 
at theii- parish church, there to join in common prayer ; twelve 
pence was the fine for absence. But if any should be so wicked 
as to defame " this holy little book," or use in pubhc any other 
prayers to the God of heaven, or refuse to use any rite, cere- 
mony, matins, evensong, or administration of the sacraments, 
ordained therein : then shall such person be imprisoned for half 
a year, and deprived of all his emoluments. 

The passing of these acts was strenuously resisted by the 
cathohcs in the upper house; but in vain. Nor were the 
milder and more pious of the reformers pleased with many of 
the rites and forms imposed by the act of uniformity, and in 
the book of Common Prayer. Both parties objected on the 
gi'ound of their religious opinions ; but no one saw how unholy 
and unscriptural were these legislative measures, nor how much 
they set at nought the rights of conscience. And when at 
midsummer (1559), the liturgy was introduced, and the oath 
of supremacy administered, only eighty rectors, with one 
hundred and seven dignitaries of the church, in all one hun- 
dred and eighty-seven, from among more than nine thousand 
clergymen, were found to refuse comphance. A memorable 

« Cox to Gualter, Feb. 12, 1571. Zurich Lett.,i. 235. It was this 
very bishop that stirred up " the troubles at Frankfort" about the prayer- 
book. — PhcEnix, ii. 72. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 139 

exhibition of the power of self-interest, and of the Httle truth- 
fuhiess and religion then existing among the rehgions guides of 
the people.^ 

The soiu'ce of these errors in legislation, may be discovered 
in the ^-iews of the reformers on the nature of the church. In 
their conference with the cathohcs, while the measures were 
under the consideration of parhament, the protestants laid 
down the following proposition for debate. " Every particular 
chm-ch hath authority to institute, change, and abrogate cere- 
monies and rites in the church, so that it be to edify ;" and 
they thus define the term, " every particular chm-ch :" — " We 
understand every particular kingdom, province, or region, which 
by order make one Christian society, or body, according to 
the distinction of countries, and orders of the same."f The 
church of Christ is thus made co-extensive with the provinces, 
nations, and kingdoms of the world. From its fold none are 
excluded, however profane. Because girt about by the same 
natural boundaries, the godly and the ungodly are united into 
one ecclesiastical community, and the natural laws which 
govern eveiy social state, must, of necessity, become the rule 
and standard of the supernatural. The church ceases to be the 
fellowship of the saints ; the saying of our Lord, My kingdom 
is not of this world, is reversed. Necessai-ily different laws 
than those he has instituted, must be made to govern such a 
mixed assemblage, since his divine legislation has respect to a 
community, constituted by repentance towards God, and faith 
in the Lord Jesus Christ. The terms of communion must be 



* Cardwell's Hist, of Conferences on Book of Common Prayer, p. 35. 
Statutes at Large, 1 Elizabeth, c. 2. 

t Cardwell's Hist, of Conferences, &c., p. 72. " For if the common- 
wealth be Christian, if the people which are of it do publicly embrace the 
true religion, this very thing doth make it the church, as hath been 
shewed." — Hooker's Works, iii. 324, Hanbury's edit. 



140 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

altered, and hirth of blood, of the will of the fleshy and the will 
of man, may suffice to make a son of God.^ 

"With great consistency tlie protestant divines proceed to say, 
that the ceremonies and rites of the church, " may by God's 
word, by general councils, and by particular provinces, regions, 
and societies of Christians, according to the state of the times, 
be instituted and ordained, changed and removed, upon such 
just grounds, causes, and considerations, as the state of the 
times, places, people, and other circumstances shall require ; so 
that it be done to edify God's people."f In other words, a 
poHtical state, a general council, and God's word, are of equal 
and co-ordinate authority in the church of God, that is, in a 
province or national society of Christians ; and in questions of 
ecclesiastical pohty, the superiority of dominion is with the 
magistrate, or political chief of the nation, who is also the 
" supreme governor" of the church. Thus, " things of then* 
own nature indifferent," may be lawfully imposed on the 
consciences of men, and the godly be compelled to submit to 
an authority in the church, unrecognised in the oracles of truth. 
The rule laid down with so much apparent exphcitness, that 
such things only may be enjoined as are edifying to God's 
people, it is self-evident, is worthless. The queen, the deposi- 
tary of the nation's power, the exponent of the nation's will, 
which be it remembered is the church, is edified when on 
bended knee she offers prayer at a gilded shrine, with her eye 
glancing upon a cross, the emblem of man's redemption. But 
her bishops are scandalized at the sight. This " scenic appara- 
tus of divine worship" offends them. ".As if," says Jewel, " the 
Christian religion could not exist without something tawdry."^ 
But who then shall decide ? The word of God ? The bishops, 
its professed expounders ? Whose edification shall be the rule 

* See the order of" Infant Baptism, in the Book of Common Prayer. 

t Cardwell, Hist of Conf., p. 72. 

X To Martyr in 1599. Zurich Lett., i. 23. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 141 

of judgment ? It is the queen, and the parhament of the 
nation, and not the statute-book of Chiist, which- shall decide. 
And fui'ther, it shall be sedition, treason to the magistrate, to 
ventm-e to disobey, or even to call in question then* decisions. 
"For the queen, a most discreet and excellent woman, most 
manfully and courageously declared, that she would not allow 
any of her subjects to dissent from this rehgion with impunity."* 

It is ob\TLOUs that on such principles the church would be 
sacrificed to the world ; that a reformation thus estabhshed 
would be adverse to the claims of Jesus, as King in Zion ; and 
that a foundation would be laid for perpetual strife and division ; 
for minds, in which the supremacy of God's word is acknow- 
ledged, must, sooner or later, rise in rebeUion against the 
supremacy of the thi-one, the imposing power, and endeavor to 
break through the " braided trammels," woven to keep them 
in bondage to the elements of the world. Such was the case : 
and to that strife we have now to direct om* attention. 

Stringent as were the above laws, and of imperative obhgation 
on the subjects of the queen, a considerable latitude of practice 
was enjoyed duiing the first five years of her reign. Cathohcs 
saw no such great change in external ordinances, as to feel their 
absence from the paiish chm'ches a matter of religious necessity. 
The preachei-s of the gospel were comparatively few ; hardly one 
in a hundred of the clergy was able or willing to preach. 
Many parishes were without a clergyman, and some dioceses 
Tvithout a bishop. Much fr-eedom was thus enjoyed by those 
who had at heart the dissemination of divine truth ; and by 
commendatory lettei*s fr*om the queen or one of the bishops, 

* Jewel to Martyr, May 20, 1560. Zurich Lett., i. 79. Saith Arch- 
bishop Sandys a few years later, as the beams of royal favor fell upon 
him, " Our Deborah hath mightily repressed the rebel Jabin ; our Judith 
hath beheaded Holophernes, the sworn enemy of Christianity ; our 
Hester hath hanged up that Haman which sought to bring us and our 
children into miserable servitude." — Sermons, &c., by Sandys, Arch- 
bishop of York, p. 81. Parker Society. 



142 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

some few eminent men were permitted to preacli throughout 
the country.'^ Great diversities Hkewise existed among the 
officiating clergy ; some more than others adhering to the 
rubric, some altogether passing it by. So, according to secretary 
Cecil, some said the service and prayers in the chancel, others 
in the body of the church ; some officiated in a seat, others in 
a pulpit ; some in a surplice, others without ; some baptized in 
a font, others in a bason ; some signed with a cross, by others 
it was omitted ; some of the clergy wore square caps, some 
round ones, and some hats.f Some, like Bishop Jewel, thought 
the habits theatrical, employed because of the ignorance of the 
priests, who being found no better than logs of wood, 
without talent, learning, or morality, were commended to 
the people " by that comical dress."| Others, with the pious 
Sampson, called them " the relics of the Amorites," a popish 
invention, to be abominated by all godly people.§ 

Such disorders were intolerable. They broke the uniformity 
so earnestly desired. This variety in practice, this disagreement 
in rehgion — as if religion consisted in these ceremonial observ- 
ances and vestures — and this disregard of the establishment, 
disturbed the public harmony, and dissevered the government. 
So the queen thought, and thus she wrote to the archbishop of 
Canterbury, chiding him and his fellow-bishops for their remiss- 
ness, and commanding them to exercise their authority with 
more vigilance and vigor. She was resolved, she said, to bring 
her subjects to conformity ; peevishness and clamor she would 
not suffer to be indulged ; nor should any man's obstinacy 
shelter him from punishment.] The bishops were roused to 
exertion. They soon (1564) issued certain disciphnary laws, to 

* Lever to Bullinger, July 10, 1660. Zur. Lett. i. 85. 
t Collier, vi. 394. 

t Jewel to Martyr, Nov. 5, 1559. Zur. Lett. i. 52. 
§ Sampson to Martyr, Jan. 6, 1560. Ibid. i. 64, 158. 
I) Collier, vi. 395. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 143 

which the clergy were compelled to subscribe. The shapes and 
fashions of ecclesiastical dress were their chief subject. Side- 
gowns A\ith sleeves, straight at the hand, without any cuffs or 
falling capes, tippets of white sarcenet, silk hoods, caps, copes, 
comely surpHces with sleeves, were among the weightier matters 
that engaged the earnest attention and solemn consultations of 
the reverend bench, for the " advauncement of God's glory, and 
to the estabhshmente of Christe's pure religion." That none 
might avoid the imposition, all licenses to preach were with- 
di-awn from the ensuing March, and not renewed until the 
clergy should append their signatm-es to all things therein 
prescribed."^ 

A strong and early disincHnation to wear the habits had been 
shown by Dr. Thomas Sampson, dean of Christchurch, and Dr. 
Lawrence Humphreys, Regius Professor of Di^-inity, and Presi- 
dent of Magdalen College, Oxford. The unseemliness of these 
superstitious dresses was from the first a matter of complaint 
with the pious Sampson. From Strasburg, on his way home, 
he expressed to Peter Martyr his dishke. " I think it," says he, 
" scarcely endurable, even if we are to act in all things accord- 
ing to the law of expediency."! The other exiles sympathized 
in his objections, and fruitlessly endeavored to set the obnoxious 
garments aside.J The popish attachments of the queen to cru- 
cifixes and images, to silk hoods and surplices, even led Jewel to 
contemplate the necessity of abandoning his bishopric.§ Never- 
theless, after the publication of the queen^s injunctions (1559), 
by which "some ornaments, such as the mass-priests formerly" 
used, were presci-ibed, gTeat numbers of the clergy, who had 
put them off, resumed them. They wore them, they said, for 
the sake of obedience. " They are but few of us," writes Lever 

» Doc. Annals, i. 287. Collier, vi. 400. 

t Zurich Letters, i. 1, 

i Strype, Annals I. i. 263. 

§ Jewel to Martyr, Feb. 9, 1560. Zur. Lett. i. 68. 



144 STRUGGLES AND TKIUMPHS 

to his friend Bullinger, " who hold such garments in the same 
abhorrence as the soldier, mentioned by Tertulhan, did the 
crown."* Thus the ears and eyes of the multitude were fasci- 
nated, and they could scarcely believe but that the popish doc- 
trine was retained, or would shortly be restored.f 

But the latitude hitherto enjoyed, by the connivance of the 
prelates, was now to cease. The pubhcation of the advertise- 
ments, the disciphnary laws above-mentioned, was immediately 
followed by resolute efforts to enforce them. Deprivation was 
the penalty of non-compliance. In the month of March (1564), 
Sampson and Humphreys, with four London ministers, were 
cited before the queen's commissioners. All the six declined 
conformity ; they could not be prevailed upon, although sub- 
mission was sanctioned by several of the foreign reformers, who 
had gained their esteem and affection in the yeai*s of exile. 
Every indulgence was denied them. Conformity or deprivation 
was the alternative absolutely placed before them.J On the 
24th of March, the same choice was proposed to the whole 
metropolitan clergy. A conforming priest, clothed in the 
obnoxious vestures, was placed before them. " My masters," 
said the bishop's chancellor, " the council's pleasure is, that ye 
strictly keep unity of apparel, like to this man. In the church, 
ye must wear a surplice ; the rubrics in the book of Common 
Prayer, the queen's majesty's injunctions, and the articles, ye 
must inviolably observe. Ye that will subscribe, write volo ; 
ye that will not, write nolo. Be brief; no words." Efforts to 
speak were abruptly stopped : " Peace, peace ; Apparitor, call 
the churches." Thirty, out of one hundred and forty, preferred 
immediate sequestration ; and with few exceptions, were deprived 
at the end of three months allowed them for reflection. The 



* Tertullianus de Corona, c. i. 

t July 10, 15G0. Zur. Lett. i. 84. 

t Soames's Elizabeth. Rel. History, pp. 45, 46. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 145 

papists among them went abroad. The rest welcomed poverty, 
rather than pollute their consciences with an unholy comphance.* 
It would lead us beyond our purpose to detail the varying 
aspects and events of this conflict. The matter in question 
appeared trifling ; but it was pregnant with the most important 
consequences. The whole question of church authority, and of 
human intervention in divine things, was stirred ; and the 
refusal to wear a surplice, a square cap, a gown of pecuhar 
fashion, involving as it did the duty of obedience to the ruhng 
power, could be justified only by an appeal to the paramount 
law, that Christ atone is king in his church. The resulting 
exclusion of the secular magistrate, either as legislator or admi- 
nistrator, from the sacred fold, was not however perceived ; and 
when set before the protestant mind by the baptists, was deemed 
■\-isionary and impracticable ; nay, seditious and subvereive of all 
authority whatsoever. Yet, here and there, in the examinations 
and writings of the nonconformists, may be found glimpses of 
the fundamental objection to these impositions ; they exalted the 
supremacy of the scriptures, and confidently appealed to its 
decisions, but threw open the flank of an otherwise impregnable 
position, by one mistaken conclusion. They were fatally incon- 
sistent in recognising any human authority, or royal supremacy, 
in the church of Christ, while they objected to consequences 
inevitably flowing from its exercise. The bible and the statute- 
book cannot possess a co-ordinate jurisdiction ; one must reign 
supreme. The puritans, therefore, erred in admitting a foreign 
authority into the kingdom of the Most High — that of men. 

The chief arguments employed against the habits were two. 
1. That all things in the church ought to edify. 2. That the 
queen had no right to impose anything besides scripture, or 
contrary to it. The apparel in question had been abused to 
idolatrous purposes ; it was offensive from its associations, and 
therefore unedifying to the children of God. Neither could the 

* Soames, pp. 47, 48. 
1 



STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

scriptures of truth, nor the elder fathers, be brought to sanction 
such a dress, for the ministry of the new dispensation. Christ 
had purchased a hberty for his people which ought to be 
maintained, and royal interference must be confined to the 
enforcement of his instructions.* This latter admission of the 
nonconformists breached their munition of rock. 

And now the godly mourned. Schism began to rend the 
church ; the fair prospect was overspread with clouds. In vain 
they awaited the guidance of the Divine Spirit ; for the queen, 
who held the helm, directed the bark " according to her 
pleasure." Under her charge it was drifting fast towards the 
sands of a shifting, worldly policy ; and ere long some would be 
compelled to abandon a vessel whose pilot, neither truth nor 
zeal, piety nor importunity, could persuade to tm*n the " sails to 
another quarter."f 

» Neal, i. 141—143, note. 

t See Horn's Letter to Bullinger, August 8, 1571. Zurich Letters, 
ii. 248. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 147 



SECTION VII. 

THE PURITANS. 

Symptoms of furtlier movement soon began to appear ; and 
many other matter to be called in question, besides caps and 
copes. As scripture did not authorise their use, so were there 
some other things not found \sTitten therein, but to which the 
rulers of the church most pertinaciously adhered. Were 
archbishops, bishops, deans, archdeacons, rectors, vicars, curates, 
commissaries, &c., necessary parts of the sacred edifice, whose 
builder and maJcer is God ? From whom was derived the 
royal title of supreme governor of the chm-ch of England ? Was 
there not another Head, whose claim was infinitely more 
legitimate, but disallowed by English parliaments and queen's 
councils ? "WTio imparted the right of limiting the prayers of 
the faithful to the book of Common Prayer ? Were there no 
"absm-dities and silly superfluities" in it? Was it not 
composed " after the model, and in the manner of the papists ?" 
Whence came the commissaiy's power of excommunication, and 
the absolution of the excommunicated in private, " without any 
trouble, and for a sum of money?" Were episcopal com*ts, 
courts of arches and audience, and courts of faculties, granting 
Hcenses for non-residence, pluralities, dispensations, (fee, scriptu- 
ral additions to the courts of the Lord's house ? Part-singing 
in churches, organs, tolling bells at funerals, and on vigils of 
saints, bowing at the name of Jesus, baptism at private houses 
and by women, the sign of the cross, the sponsorial responses 



148 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

of the infant, — were these, and other such things, becoming the 
simphcity, and according to the precepts, of the gospel ? And 
last, but not least, was it not an unheard-of assumption, that 
" the queen's majesty, with the advice of the archbishop of 
Canterbury, may order, change, and remove anything in the 
church at her pleasure ?"'^ 

Yet these truly unscriptural laws and institutions were 
rigorously enforced, and the queen's known determination 
destroyed the hope of any relaxation. The hardships and 
deprivations of many godly uncompliant men, induced many, 
in the year 1566, to separate from the estabhshed worship. 
Despite the meanness of their condition, and the perils that 
surrounded them, they " stood to the truth of God's word ;" and 
sometimes in private houses, sometimes in the fields, and 
occasionally even in ships, they held their meetings and 
administered the sacraments. They also ordained them minis- 
ters and deacons, and exercised discipline upon such as- walked 
not according to godliness, f In this separation, they had not 
the sympathy of all who agreed with them as to the objection- 
able nature of the established worship. Many still clung to the 
vain hope of a purer ritual. They thought the evils of separa- 
tion greater than submission to episcopal and royal commands. 
The church's standards of doctrine were pure, from her pulpits 
many proclaimed the way of salvation, and the points of 
agreement were more than those of difference. Thus did such 
men as Fox, Sampson, and Humphreys argue, and cleave to a 
community, which had been sanctified in their affections by the 
blood of many saints.J 

The separatists, however, became more bold. In the follow- 
ing year they ventured to assemble at Plumber's Hall, in 

* The Church of England as described by Perceval Wilburn. Zurich 
Letters, ii. 358. 

t Grindal to Bullinger, June 11, 1568. Zur. Lett. i. 201. 
i Price, i. 198. 



OF RELTGIOrS LIBERTY. 149 

London. Being discovered, the slieritTs broke up tlieir meeting 
and took tlie greater part into custody. The day after, they 
were brought before bishop Grindal, who charged them with 
their separation as a crime, and that thereby they condemned 
the well-refonned church of England, for which martyi-s had 
shed their blood. Why had they separated ? Were not the 
ceremonies indifferent, and imder the prince's power to command 
for the sake of order ? " So long," said John Smith, one of the 
company, " as we might have the word freely preached, and the 
sacraments administered mthout the use of idolatrous gear, we 
never assembled in private houses. But when all our preachers 
who could not subscribe to your apparel and your laws, were 
displaced, so that we could not hear any of them in the church 
for the space of seven or eight weeks, excepting father Cover- 
dale, who at leng-th durst not make known to us where he 
preached ; and then we were troubled in your com*ts fi'om day 
to day, for not coming to om* parish churches ; we considered 
among ourselves what we should do." Being thus driven from 
the Anghcan pale, they formed a congregation after the example 
of one in Queen Mary's days, using in their worship a book 
formerly approved by Calvin. Their further objections embraced 
the hierarchy of the church. They asserted that the kingly 
authority of Jesus Christ was sacrificed to popish canons and 
the prince's will. By that " prince's will, they too were 
saciificed " to the phantom of uniformity : they were cast into 
piison. It was the beginning of sorrows. Severities multiphed. 
The prisons of London were soon filled with a numerous band 
of men, to whom a good conscience was of more value than the 
wealth and preferments of the state church. * 

An able and learned expositor of the advancing sentiments 
of the nonconformists, now appeared in the person of Mr. 
Thomas Cartwi'ight. He availed himself of his pubHc position 
as di\inity lecturer at Cambridge, to proclaim the necessity of 

* Parte of a Register, 23—37. Grindal's Remains, p. 369. 



150 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

further reformation, and of a return to the practice of apostolic 
men. He asserted that a divine model of church polity was 
prepared in scripture, to which every ecclesiastical arrangement 
should conform. The titles and offices of archbishops and 
archdeacons were not there ; they must be suppressed. The 
names of bishops, too, must be rejected, since the office no 
longer resembled the apostolic institute. Character and ability 
to exercise the functions of a teacher and pastor, must be 
peremptorily required of all who aspired to be ministers of the 
church. In many other particulars the Anglican forms needed 
amendment, and ought to be reduced to the primitive pattern : 
then only could the church of England be regarded as a church 
of Christ.'* These were dangerous doctrines, subversive of the 
very being of the estabhshment. Their defender was suspended 
from his office, expelled the university, and for a time compelled 
to reside abroad. 

Meanwhile the sufferings of the non-compliant ministers 
increased ; they were every where harassed by examinations, 
suspensions, deprivations, and imprisonments. Subscription 
was strictly insisted on. The house of commons was haughtily 
commanded not to interfere with the queen's prerogative in 
ecclesiastical affairs ; and the aged but energetic proposer of 
further reformation, was forbidden to enter the house during her 
pleasure. " The world," it was said, " cannot bear two suns, 
much less can the kingdom endure two queens, or two 
rehgions.f 

These rigorous proceedings were not, and could not be 
regarded as arising from a jealous watchfulness over the interests 
of Christ's kingdom. "How the most part of the bishops," 
writes one of the deprived ministers, " by wealth, honors, and 
dignity, are blinded, the present storms and tempests, where- 

* Collier, vi. 485. Neal, i. 173. 

t Neal, i. 185. Soames, p. 147. Pilkington to Bullinger, July 15, 
1570. Zur. Lett. i. 222. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 161 

with God's people are tossed, do sufficiently declare." Tliey 
could not be sincerely anxious to cast out " the rags and dregs" 
of popery, while they stretched to the uttermost their authority 
to keep them ; for they who would not use them, were forbidden 
to preach, deprived, and imprisoned. Thousands of unworthy 
men were permitted to exercise their ministry, and to enjoy 
hvings ; while fit and competent men were thrust out, because 
unwilling to wear the pope's livery. Immorality, the saying of 
mass for many years, gaming, and drunkenness, were no bar to 
promotion, if only such persons would obey the episcopal 
injunctions. Disobedience to the unscriptural regulations of the 
prince, was visited with the severest penalties by these pretended 
shepherds, but no notice taken of disobedience to God.* 

At length, in 15'72, the controversy assumed a form more 
menacing to the stabihty of the chm'ch than it had yet done. 
Though of much influence in the house of commons, the puritan 
party failed to obtain any relief. Or, as the spirited Wentworth 
afterwards said, " God would not vouchsafe that his Holy Spirit 
should all that session descend upon our bishops, so that in that 
session nothing was done to the advancement of his glory."f 
Immediately after the prorogation, the famous Admonition to 
Parliament appeared. The effect of it was great and immediate, 
and threw consternation into the intrenchments of the church. 
Such bold language had not been heard before ; the mitre was 
challenged to a fall. It commences with a reference to the cita- 
tions and deprivations of " many ministers of God's holy word 
and sacraments," by her majesty's high commissioners, and 
prays the interference of the house. It then details with much 
energy and shai-pness, it may be said irritation, the many griev- 
ances under which those desirous of reformation suffered. The 
prayer-book, they said, was picked and culled out of that popish 
dunghill, the portuise and mass-book ; the homilies were too 

* A Comfortable Epistle, &c. Parte of a Register, pp. 2 — 9. 
t Speech in 1575. Parliamentary History, iv. 195. 



162 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

homely to be set in tlie place of scripture ; the title of priests 
was a denial of Christ's having come, or a memorial of the 
popish priesthood ; the rites employed in infant baptism were 
childish and superstitious toys ; confirmation was popish and 
peevish ; the churching of women smelt of Jewish pm-ifications ; 
the psalms were tossed like tennis balls, so confused was their 
order ; divine service was often profanely hurried, that the 
minister might go to his second church, and the people to their 
games, dancing, bull-baiting, and above all, to the interludes ; 
the whole hierarchy, from the archbishop of Canterbury to the 
meanest sexton, was opposed to the word of God-; a true 
ministry and regiment of the church were entirely wanting. To 
the articles, however, they were wilhng to subscribe. They con- 
clude with a prayer, " that the reign of antichrist may be turned 
out headlong from amongst us, and Christ our Lord may reign 
over us by his word."* 

The authors of this bold appeal to the nation's represent- 
atives, and of these sweeping accusations against the church, 
were Mr. John Field and Mr. Thomas Willcocks, two puritan 
clergymen of celebrity. Both were immediately imjDrisoned in 
Newgate. The archbishop's intolerance had, at length, led men 
to question the authority that oppressed them, and a rival polity 
now stood forth to claim the affections, and to an-est the judg- 
ment of the godly. Henceforth the conflict was not for mere 
concessions, nor for the removal of offensive apparel from the 
services of the church ; the very existence of the hierarchy was 
threatened, and a new aspirant to dominion over conscience 
appeared, when presbytery stood forth in array before the 
entrenched hosts of established episcopacy. 

Mr. Cai'twright returned about this time from exile, and sup- 
ported the first by a Second Admonition. In this he lays down 
the new " platform " of church disciphne, taking the Genevan 

* An Admonition to Parliament, 12mo. It has neither name, place, 
nor date. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 153 

presb}i;erial goYernment for Ms model. He endeavoi's to 
strengthen his positions by an appeal to scripture, on \^'hich all 
chui-ch pohty as ^ell as doctrine depends. But to give his 
system stability, he enunciates the following important senti- 
ment. " The ci^^l magistrate, the nui-se and foster-father of the 
church, shall do well to provide some sharp punishment for 
those that contemn this censure and disciphne of the church, 
for no doubt it is in the degree of blasphemy, of a heathen, our 
Sa^iour says, that renounceth God and Christ."* Near the 
close, in an appeal to the queen, he further urges the point. 
" We beseech her majesty to have the hearing of this matter 
of God's, and to take the defence of it upon her ; and to fortify 
it by law, that it may be received by common order throughout 
her dominions. For though the orders be, and ought to be, 
drawn out of the book of God, yet it is her majesty, that by her 
princely authority, should see eveiy of these things put in 
practice, and punish those that neglect them, making laws 
therefore ; for the church may keep these orders, but never in 
peace, except the comfortable and blessed assistance of the states 
and governors hnk in to see them accepted in their coimtries 
and used."f Such was the foundation laid by tliis gTeat puritan 
di^^ne, and we look in vain through his writmgs to find any 
higher views of human freedom in the church of God. 

This pubhcation of Mr. CartwTight, was followed in a few 
weeks by Dr. Whitgift's Answer to the first Admonition ; at 

* A Second Admonition, &c.,p. 49. 

t Ibid. p. 60. " But," saith archbishop Sandys, " our skilful house- 
holder, our wise governor, hath planted in this our vineyard neither 
thorns nor thistles, but the true vine — Christ. This vine hath been 
diligently watered with the dew of God's truth sincerely preached, — 
with his sacraments reverently administered, according to his will ; it 
hath been under-propped with the continuance of authority, and defence 
of zealous Christian magistrates. . ... No flock better fed ; no people 
more instructed ; no vineyard in the world more beautiful or goodly to 
behold." — Sermons, p. 59. Parker Society edition. 



154 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

the close of whicli he briefly refers to the second. In his 
introduction, Whitgift endeavors, at some length, to fix on 
the monitors the charge of Anabaptistry ; in that they con- 
sidered not the authority due to the magistrate in ecclesiastical 
matters, nor the inapplicability of scripture rules to the varying 
circumstances of time and place.* Cartwright, in his reply, 
pubHshed in the following year, disclaimed this identity. He 
fully admitted the magistrate's authority, and acknowledged its 
lawfulness ; but maintained that it was limited in its exercise by 
the scriptures. Truth might andr ought to be established and 
held by the ci\T.l power ; but not a hierarchy and a discipline 
having no foundation therein. Two other large volumes 
followed these, one on either side ; but it were too long to enter 
upon the numerous subjects of discussion embraced by them. 
It will suffice, if we mark the agreement or difference of opinion 
of the disputants, on one or two of the main features of the 
strife. 

The controversy turned upon two important points — church 
polity and church authority ; or the sufficiency of scripture as a 
rule for ecclesiastical discipline, and the nature and extent of 
the magistrates' authority in or over the church. On the first 
topic they were at irreconcilable variance. Whitgift would 
grant scripture to be the only rule for doctrine, but for the rest, 
the church hath power to decree rites and ceremonies. On 
the general question, the arguments of Cartwright were 
conclusive and triumphant ; but he had to encounter gi'eat 
difficulties in estabhshing his synodal and consistorial disciphne, 
as the order of the New Testament. With his opponent, the 
learned puritan was compelled to resort to patristical authority, 
for proofs of some of his positions ; and not a little ingenuity 
does he display in order to evade the force of the intractable 
passages quoted against him. If the testimony of the fathei-s 
had sufficed to prove episcopacy to be the divine polity of the 

*An Answere to a certen Libel, &c. p. i. 4to. 1572. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 155 

church, then did Whitgift gain the advantage ; on scriptural 
grounds he was overthrown by the learned puritan. The 
episcopahan could, however, solace himself with the discomfituro 
which the presbytery, the holy discipline of his antagonist, met 
with at his hands. 

On the second topic, the authority of the prince, Whitgift 
justified the appellation of head of the church, given to the 
reigning sovereign ; and boldly asserted, not only that it was 
his duty to enforce obedience to the doctrines and commands 
of God's word, but to arrange, and even invent, new ceremonies 
in the church, for order and decency.* Cartwright admitted 
the duty of the magistrate to enforce doctrine, but rejected the 
title of head, as clashing with the only headship of Christ ; and 
Umited his authority to the imposition of that polity which was 
revealed in scripture. Christ, he said, was the only King and 
Head in his church, and had committed to pastors and 
teachers, the exercise of disciphne according to his word ; it was 
spiritual in its origin and object, and must be administered by 
spiritual men, lawfully called and ordained thereto. But it was 
incumbent on the magistrate to establish, within his jurisdiction, 
this true and godly disciphne, and to aid, with his ci^'il power, 
the presbytery in enforcing it. Whitgift was not slow to 
perceive, that this was a return to the papal doctrine of the 
church's independence of the state : while at the same time it 
made the civil power subservient to it. " It bringeth in a new 
popedom and tyranny into the church," said he. 

But Cartwright's views of the power of the magistrate did 
not stop here. He asserted, that the judicial laws of Moses, 

* Thirty years later it was asserted, in a book dedicated to the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, " Our church hath this day power to have instituted 
the baptism of infants, although it had not been used in former ages. 
And consequently, that it hath power, a fortiori, to set down orders and 
laws for the apparel of ministers," &c. ! — The Regiment of the Church, 
as it is agreeable with Scriptures, 6lc. By Thomas Bell, London, 1606. 
4to. p. 184. 



156 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

whicli were "merely politic and mthoiit all mixture of cere 

monies, must i-emain ; forasmuch as there is in those 

laws a constant and everlasting equity ;" therefore, in making 
political laws, Christian magistrates ought to propound those 
laws unto themselves, and in the hght of their equity, frame 
them.* Hence he concluded that contemners of the word 
ought to be put to death ; since, " he that despiseth the word 
of God, despiseth God himself." For, " if it be meet to main- 
tain the life of man, by the punishment of death, how should 
the honor of God, which is more precious than all men's lives, 
be with smaller punishment estabhshed." And he goes on to 
assert, that the immoralities, perjuries, and murders, which 
abounded in the land, owed their prevalence to the " want of 
sharp and severe punishment, especially against idolaters, 
blasphemers, contemners of true religion, and of the service of 
God."t 

The disputants were agreed upon two principles which were 
fundamental in the controversy ; their differences arose in the 
application of them. Both believed, 1. That the church should 
be a national church, and not a mere congregation of believers ; 
2. That a divine obligation lay upon the magistrate to main- 
tain, vi et arinis, the true religion — that is, Christianity. They 
divided on the question, which of the two competing theories, 
episcopacy or presbytery, ought to be the favored polity. The 
puritan would have the point determined by scripture only, the 
episcopalian by scripture and the fathers. It was a mere 
question of polity ; in doctrinal sentiment they were agreed. 

* Second Replie, p. 97, edit. 1575. 

t Ibid. pp. 68, 117. Hallam remarks, after quoting a somewhat 
similar passage to the above, " It is difficult to believe that I am 
transcribing the words of a protestant writer ; so much does this passage 
call to mind those tones of infatuated arrogance which had been heard 
from the lips of Gregory VII., and of those who trod in his footsteps." 
—Const. Hist. i. 254. See also Short, p. 182. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 157 

The thirty-nine articles were to each party the law of belief, 
and were willingly subscribed by both. Whether, therefore, 
the prince became the head of the church, or merely the 
executor of its decrees, the result must be the same — oppres- 
sion of conscience, and the persecution of the dissentient. And 
at this distance of time, looking at the state of the nation, sunk 
in ignorance and vice, and at the historical results of the one 
polity, and the probable effects of the other, apart from any 
scriptural authority that either might show, we are inclined to 
think, that the episcopal, under all circumstances, was the 
preferable pohty of the two. The sterner features of the 
presbyterian discipline, its provisions for a close and systematic 
inquiry into the social life of the communit}^, and that inquisi- 
tion brought to bear upon an ill-instructed and immoral people, 
w^ould have led to more suffering, and wider-spread persecution, 
than that which befell the earnest, and generally pious, 
upholders of the "holy discipline." Even while themselves 
endm-ing the many hardships entailed by a conscientious 
adherence to their views, they often urged most strenuously 
upon the ruling powers, the proscription, expatriation, and 
punishment of the cathohcs. " It was good policy," said one, 
" to root out the sprigs of popery." All history showed how 
necessary it was, " when thou hast subdued thy capital enemy, 
or banished him, to root out all his friends."^ The example 
of Cahdn and Servetus would doubtless have had its counter- 
part under a presbyterian rule. 

The boldness and extent of the change advocated in the 
Admonitions, and in Cartwright's rephes, awakened the fears 
ynd the anger of the queen and hierarchy. In the month of 
Tune (1573), a condemnatory proclamation was published. All 
who possessed copies of these books were ordered to bring them 
in for destruction. Before the close of the year, another mani- 

* An Humble Motion to the Lords of the Council, p. 54, ed. 1599. 



168 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

festo was issued, denouncing these despisers of the order settled 
in the church, and of the common prayer ; " wherein is nothing 
contained but the scripture of God, and that which is consonant 
unto it." The bishops were directed to enforce yet more strictly 
the Act of Uniformity. But although these writings were in 
wide circulation, thirty-four copies only, which lay in the hands 
of a bookseller, w^ere brought in.* 

It is unnecessary to trace the progress of events to the period 
of the queen's death. One uniform course of repression and 
punishment of the puritans was adopted. Many hundreds of 
pious and holy men were excluded from the ministry, deprived 
of their property, and often of life, through long and painful 
imprisonments. With growing severities the bitterness of both 
parties increased, and innumerable violent publications added 
fuel to the flame. The Marprelate tracts stood prominently 
forth, as incentives to greater rigor, and were doubtless injurious 
to the cause they w^ere intended to serve. A new feature was 
introduced into the controversy, when, for the first time, it was 
asserted by Bancroft, in a sermon at St. Paul's cross, in 1589, 
that episcopacy was a divine ordinance ; that the bishops had 
a supremacy over the clergy by divine right, " and were 
empowered, by virtue of their commission from heaven, to 
superintend and regulate their proceedings."! This new 
element of strife was vigorously assailed ; but no refutation of 
such extravagant claims, removed, in the least, the oppressive 
burdens under which the consciences of the puritans groaned. 
The reign of Ehzabeth closed, without any advance in the refor- 
mation so earnestly desired, so boldly attempted, and so 
courageously maintained. 

* Doc. Annals, i. 384. Neal, i, 195. 
t Price, i. 376. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 159 



SECTION YIII. 

THE BROWNISTS. 

More correct ^^ews of tlie nature of the cliurcli of Christ, 
were slowly ^viiming their way through the contentions of the 
two great parties dividing the nation, and struggling for mas- 
tery. It is not known whence Robert Browne acquired those 
opinions, which, about the year 1580, he began to propagate in 
the counties of N'orfolk and Suffolk. He had, some yeara 
before, made himself obnoxious by his bold invectives against 
the established order, and, with several other puritans, was 
cited, in 1571, before archbishop Whitgift. His high connexions 
for a time protected him. But he now began to preach and 
disseminate opinions, which were alike destructive of episcopacy 
and presbytery, and of a national church under either form. 

He said, that " The church planted and gathered, is a com- 
pany, or number, of Christians and believers, which by a willing 
covenant made with their God, are. under the government of 

God and Christ, and keep his laws in one holy communion 

The kingdom of Christ is his oifice of govei-nment, whereby he 
useth the obedience of his people to keep his laws and com- 
mandments, to their salvation and welfare The kingdom 

of antichrist is his government confirmed by the civil mag-istrate, 
whereby he abuseth the obedience of the people to keep his e\il 
laws and customs, to their own damnation Civil magis- 
trates, are persons authorized of God, and received by the 
consent or choice of the people, whether officers or subjects, or 



160 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

by birth and succession also, to make and execute laws by 
public agreement; to rule the commonwealth in all outward 
justice ; and to maintain the right, welfare, and honor thereof, 
with outward power, bodily punishments, and civil forcing of 
men.'"^ 

Thus Browne would have the church composed of true 
Christians only, excluding therefrom all human law. He 
inveighed strongly against the puritans for their pusillanimity 
and sin, in awaiting a reformation by the magistrate. It was 
a duty that they owed to God, to separate from the antichristian 
community to which they clung, and to set up at once the 
building and kingdom of the Lord. Such sentiments soon 
brought upon him prelatical wrath, and he was compelled to fly. 
At Middleburg, in Zealand, he, with many of his adherents, 
found a refuge. Differences of opinion soon arose among them, 
and the greater part united with the baptists, who, under the 
protection of the Prince of Orange, there formed a flourishing 
community-! 

While at Middleburg, Browne printed a work of some impor- 
tance, and which was very widely circulated in his native land. 
Some extracts have been already given. Other portions of it 
were especially directed against the wickedness of certain 
preachers, who would not amend, " until the magistrate reform 
and compel them." He thus remarks on the magistrate's 
authority : " For the magistrate, how far by their authority, or 
without it, the church must be builded and refoi*mation made, 
and whether any open wickedness must be tolerated in the church 
because of them, let this be our answer — for chiefly on this point 
they have wrought us great trouble, and dismayed many weak- 
lings fi-om embracing the truth ; — we say, therefore, and often 
have taught, concerning our sovereign, queen Elizabeth, that 

* Hanbury's Hist. Memorials of Independents, i, 18, 21. 
t Hoornbeck, J. Summa Controvers. p. 739, ed. 1676. Brandt's Hist. 
ofRef. i. .343,443. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 161 

neither the pope, nor other popehng, is to have any authority over 
her, or over the church of God, and that the church of Rome 
is antichrist, whose kingdom ought utterly to be taken away. 
Again, we say, that her authority is cinl, and that powder she 
hath as highest under God within her dominions, and that over 
all pei-sons and causes. By that, she may put to death all that 
deserve it by law, either of the church or commonwealth, and 
none may resist her, or the magistrate under her, by force or 
wicked speeches, when they execute the law." 

IS'ot untruly does he represent the puritans, as depending 
more upon secular power, than upon the spiritual weapons of 
the word of God. " You will be dehvered from the yoke of 
antichrist, by bow, and by sword, and by battle, by horse and 
horsemen, that is, by ci^al power and pomp of magistrates ; by 
their proclamations and parliaments ; and the kingdom of God 
must come with observation, that men may say, ' Lo ! the 
parHament ;' or, ' lo ! the bishop's decrees;' but the kingdom 

of God should be within you Ye set aloft man's authority 

above God's, and the preacher must hang on his sleeve for the 
discharge of his calhng." Browne regarded the church, and its 
edification, as of more importance than earthly kingdoms ; and 
by these enhghtened sentiments did much to overthrow the 
prevalent notions of magisterial duty, and to purify the church 
from pohtical intrusion. 

Yet Browne was not wholly free from error on this point. 
There were some cases, in which he considered secular inter- 
ference to be both necessary and scriptural. Thus he speaks, 
" Neither dm-st Moses, nor any of the good kings of Judah, force 
the people, by law or by power, to receive the church govern- 
ment ; but after they received it, if then they fell away, and 
sought not the Lord, they might put them to death." Again 
he says, " If the magistrate be of their flocks, why should they 
taiTy for them ? Unless they will have the sheep force the 
shepherd unto his duty. Indeed the magistrate may force him^ 



162 8TRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

but it is his shame to tarry till he he forced^ Yet elsewhere 
he asserts, that to compel to religion, to plant churches by 
power, and to force a submission to ecclesiastical government, 
by laws and penalties, belong not to the magistrate, neither yet 
to the church. " For it is the conscience, and not the power 
of man, that will drive us to seek the Lord's kingdom."* 

While, then, he claimed for the church a perfect independence 
of the civil power, he yet allowed the magistrate a coercive 
authority in cases of acknowledged duty. In this opinion hi? , 
successors followed him, as wall presently appear. It may be 
doubted, whether Browne was ever sincere in his separation 
from the church, since, on his return to his native country, he 
renounced what he had taught, conformed, and enjoyed for 
many years a living in Northamptonshire. His moral obliqui- 
ties finally brought him to a gaol, where he died. Several of 
his followers, who were very active in dispersing his books, 
were imprisoned, and two of them were put to death, f 

Between the years 1580 and 1593, the Brownists multiplied 
greatly ; so much so, that Sir Walter Raleigh stated in the 
House of Commons, perhaps somewhat at random, that there 
were not less than twenty thousand of them. They were 
divided into several congregations in Norfolk, Essex, and London. 
Mr. Henry Barrow and Mr. John Greenwood were at this time 
two of theii' most eminent ministers. In 1586, they were 
summoned before archbishop Whitgift. For a time released on 
bond, they continued their zealous labors, and were again 

* The treatise is not paged. Its full title is, "A Booke which sheweth 
the life and manners of all true Christians, and howe unlike they are to 
Turkes, and Papistes, and Heathen folke, &c. Also there goeth a treatise 
before of Reformation without tarrying for anie, and of the wickednesse 
of those Preachers which will not reforme themselves, and their charge, 
because they will tarrie till the Magistrate commaunde and compell 
them. By me Robert Browne. Middleburgh, 1582." 

t Neal, i. 248. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 168 

committed to the Fleet in 1588. After suffering mucli injustice 
and cruelty, during five years confinement in gaol, they were 
executed at Tyburn, in the year 1593. About six weeks after, 
Mr. John Penry, for the same crime, forfeited his life upon the 
scaffold.* The fidehty and loyalty to the queen of these 
sufferers for conscience' cause are beyond all question ; their 
ignominious deaths were a sacrifice to the unholy zeal of 
prelates, whom worldly pohcy and power had bhnded to the 
true nature of the kingdom of Christ. The bishops cemented 
the stones of then- building with the blood of better men. 

Their fellow-sufferers were for a long time vexed, and 
grievously afflicted, by every species of persecution. After 
enduring long impiisonments, with gi'eat fortitude, they were 
banished to other lands, and under the pastoral care of Mr. 
Francis Johnson and Mr. Henry Ainsworth, a church of these 
exiles was formed, and continued to exist for many yeai*s, at 
Amsterdam, in Holland. They were far in advance of their 
contemporaries, and were called to endure obloquy, hatred, and 
death — the common lot of those benefactors of the human race, 
who have been the fii*st to utter truths of eternal value. It 
would seem, as if by some immutable law in the moral 
government of the universe, such men must not only lay the basis 
of a new era of human progress, but expiate with their blood 
the crimes and misdeeds of the e\dl principles they destroy. 

The Brownists, or Barrowists, as they were likewise called, 
regarded the church of England in the same light as the 
puritans, from whom they sprmig. Separation was the 
legitimate conclusion of their teaching : but fi-om it they timidly 
shrunk. Both puritan and Brownist held, that the church of 
England had been constituted, for the most part, of papists, who 
had revolted from their profession in king Edward's days, and 
after another change, shed much blood of many Christian 
martyi-s in queen Mary's. " This people, yet standing in this 
* Neal, i. 347. Hanbury, i. 34. 



164 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

fearful sinful estate, in idolatry, blindness, superstition, and all 
manner of wickedness, without any professed repentance, were, 
by force and authority of law only, compelled and together 
received into the bosom and body of the church." None were 
excluded, were they never so profane ; atheists, adulterers, 
thieves, &c., were of one fellowship, one body, one church. 
The same popish prelacy and clergy were set over them, 
persecuting " to death all that dare but once mutter against 
their unlawful proceedings." Parsons, priests, vicars, curates, 
were sworn to canonical obedience, to read the service book and 
bishops' decrees. In a word, the whole clergy were in servitude 
to the lordly prelates. Now the statute-book of the kingdom 
of God commanded none, and condemned much, of these things. 
But the puritan ministers, the Brownists went on to say, were 
weary with the troubles that came upon them. They gave 
place to prelatic tyranny, and were content to conform. " Keep- 
ing now silence, yea, going back, bearing and bolstering the 
things which heretofore by word and wiiting they stood against, 
so long as there was any hope that the queen and council would 
have hearkened unto them, and put these adversary prelates out 
of the church." But it was incumbent upon the true child of 
God to separate from a church set up after the pattern and 
mould of the apostasy of Eome, and his duty, without longer 
delay, to walk in all the ordinances and commandments of the 
Lord. * 

As true Christian men, the Brownists therefore separated 
from communion with the church of England, pushing yet 
further their views of the church of Christ. Their ideas of the 
spiritual and eclectic character of the kingdom of God, placed 
them in opposition to both episcopahans and puritans. " The 
true planted and rightly established church of Christ, is a 
company of faithful people, separated from the unbelievers and 

* Preface to Confession of Faith printed in 1596. H. Ainsworth's 
Defence of Brownists, pp. 8 — 12. edition 1604. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 165 

heathens of the land : gathered in the name of Christ, whom 
they truly woi-ship, and readily obey; — joined together as 
membere of one body ; ordered and governed by such officers 
and laws, as Christ in his last will and testament, hath there- 
unto ordained." On the contrary, the parish assembhes trans- 
gressed this rule in every point, and were governed by the laws 
and ordinances of such officers as the pope left, " standing in 
bondage to the Komish courts and canons, ha^dng no power to 
execute the Lord's judgments, or to redress the least sin or 
trangression amongst themselves.'"^ Of this separated commu- 
nity, Barrow further wi'ites, " There may be none admitted into 
the church of Chi'ist, but such as enter by a pubhc profession 
of true faith ; none remain there, but such as bring forth the 
fruits of faith."f It was one amongst the many forged excuses 
of the prelates, "that where a Christian prince is, which 
maintaineth the gospel, and the whole land, not resisting this 
commandment, reverenceth the word and sacraments, there the 
whole multitude of such a land, or state, are without doubt to 
be esteemed and judged a true church."J This, in Barrow's 
estimation, was a sacrilegious profanation of the things of God — 
a poisoning of all Chiistian communion and fellowship. 

Did the Brownists then deny the power of the magistrate ? 
Were they one in opinion with the anabaptists ? Nay. " The 
prince," says Barrow, " is to govern, oversee, and provide the 
commonwealth, administering and dispensing, gatheiing and 
dispersing, the creatures and the wealth thereof, as a father and 
a steward : yet still with this interim, as the steward and 
servant of God, according to their Master's will, as they that 
shall account." " Life and goods were at his command, only in 
di^-ine things must he not command nor be obeyed ; even the 
command to fast in Lent was unjust, contrary to the bountiful 

* Conferences of Barrowe and Greenwood, p. 67. edit. 1590. 
t A Brief Discovery of the False Church, p. 8. edit. 1590. 
X Ibid. p. 13. 



166 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

liberality of God, and to his honor and praise. It were, more- 
over, contrary to the liberty and freedom God hath given ns in 

Christ Pohcy must take, and not give, laws to religion."* 

The advance was great on the politico-religious theories which 
had gone before. One principle, far-reaching in its results, and 
lying at the foundation of every question concerning the relations 
of the church to the state, was clearly enunciated and main- 
tained — that the church, the true community of behevers, is 
solely dependent on the laws of the one Lawgiver, Christ Jesus. 
Complete in itself, the church is able to execute all the functions 
for which it is formed. But here the Brownists stopped. These 
despised but honored men, were not able to advance the final 
step, and demand that perfect freedom of conscience, which is 
the corollary to the proposition they demonstrated. Thus Mr. 
Greenwood, in the conference with Cooper, says, " The magis- 
trate ought to compel the infidels to hear the doctrine of the 
church, and also with the approbation of the church, to send 
forth meet men, with gifts and gi'aces, to instruct the infidels."f 
Mr. Barrow gives the magistrate a yet greater power : " The 
prince hath the book of God committed unto him, with charge 

to see it duly executed, by every one in his calling That 

the prince also is charged, and of duty ought, to see the minis- 
ters of the church do their duty, and teach the law of God 
dihgently and sincerely, we read, Deut. xvii. 1 Chron. xxviii. 
2 Chron. xxix. and xxx. and xxxv. This did Jehoshaphat, and 
no other thing."J; But he marks the limit of the prince's power, 
and the distinction between his sentiments and those of his 
opponents, in the following manner : " It will not sufiice to con- 
fess, that God hath made the civil magistrate the keeper of the 
book of the law, to see both the tables thereof observed by all 
persons, both in the church and commonwealth ; and so hath 

* Barrow's Brief Discovery, &c., pp. 91, 92. 

t Conferences, p. 59. 

t Brief Discovery, &c. pp. 253, 257. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 167 

pouer over both churcli and commonwealth : but they must 
have this indefinite proposition gTanted them, ' That a prince 
hath power to make laws for the church.' .... A godly prince 
is bound to God's law ; made the keeper thereof, not the con- 
ti'oller ; the servant, not the Lord. God hath in that book 
made most perfect and necessary laws, both for church and 
commonwealth ; he requireth of the king and magistrate to see 
these laws executed, and not to make new." By new laws is 
to be undei-stood "traditions, ordinances, customs, (fee, which 
are not prescribed in Christ's testament."* 

The following passage, penned by Mr. Francis Johnson, will 
show how the Brownists attempted to reconcile these views with 
the contradictory sentiment, that God only can persuade the 
conscience : — " We condemn not," he says, " reformation com- 
manded and compelled by the magistrate, but do unfeignedly 
desire that God would put into the heart of her majesty, and 
all other princes within their dominions, to command and com- 
pel a reformation, according to the word of the Lord ; as it is 
expressly noted that Hezekiah, and other good kings of Judah 

did Where, note -vvithal, that it is the work of God only, 

to add to his church such as he will save. And, therefore, that 
it is not in the power of princes, or any man whatsoever, to 
pei"suade the conscience, and make membei-s of the church, but 
this must be left to God alone, who only can do it. Acts ii. 47. 
Princes may and ought, within their dominions, to abohsh all 
false worship, and all false ministries whatsoever ; and to esta- 
bhsh the true worship and ministry appointed by God in his 
word ; commanding and compeUing their subjects to come unto, 
and practise no other but this. Yet they must leave it unto 
God to persuade the conscience, and to add to his chm-ch from 
time to time such as shall be saved. "f 

It is obvious, that this is persecution, under the garb of 

* Brief Discovery, &c. pp. 218, 219. 

t An Answer to Maister H. Jacob, &.C., pp. 198, 199, ed. 1600. 



168 STRUGGLES AMD I'RlUMJt'HS 

honoring and doing service to God ; and tliat while the 
Brownists held truly, that the church ought to be free fr'om 
secular legislation, and that the conscience was God's seat, they 
most inconsistently dehvered to the magistrate a rule of action, 
which must interfere with the one, and trample upon the con- 
victions of the other. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 169 



SECTIOiN IX. 

THE BAPTISTS. 

It has been already seen, that the claim, for the church and 
for the conscience, of freedom from all human control, was a 
distinguishing and characteristic trait of the baptists in former 
reigns. The di%4ne saying, " Faith is the gift of God," 
moved, animated, strengthened them. Its practical assertion 
brought them into collision with every form of human invention 
in the worship of God. Faith, God's gift, must not be subjected 
to man's de\ice, nor enchained by the legislative enactments of 
parhaments or kings. To worship God aright, the highest 
function of humanity, the sphit must be free ; true worship can 
come only h'om a willing heart. For this the baptists bore 
cheeifully, cruel mochings, and scourgings ; yea, moreover, bonds 
and imprisonments, and death. The reign of Elizabeth saw no 
change in their faith, no amehoration of their sorrows. ISTo 
brighter day dawned for them : the " bright Occidental Star,"* 
whose rising exiles and Marian death-expecting prisoners hailed, 
was to them a scorching, meteoric flame. 

In the view of the gTeat polemic of that age, Richard Hooker, 
it was " a loose and licentious opinion, which the anabaptists " 
had embraced. They held that " a Christian man's hberty is 
lost, and the soul which Christ hath redeemed unto himself, 
injuriously drawn into servitude under the yoke of human 
power, if any law be now imposed besides the gospel of Christ, 

* Translators' Dedication of the Authorized Version of the Bible. 
8 



170 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

in obedience whereunto tlie Spirit of God, and not the constraint 
of men, is to lead ns ; according to tliat of the blessed apostle, 
Such as are led hy the Spirit of God^ they are the sons of God, 
and not such as live in thraldom ■ to men. Their judgment is, 
therefore, that the church of Christ should admit of no law- 
makers but the evangelists, no courts but presbyteries, no 
punishments but ecclesiastical censures."* His witness is true. 
Grand as were the conceptions of the " judicious Hooker," this 
idea of the Christian man's liberty exceeded them. The " door 
was too low, or he too stout to enter ;'' for not unfrequently, in 
the divine purposes of the Father, has it come to pass, " that 
poor shepherds which are accustomed to stables, have been 
found meet to have Christ revealed unto them." The vjise and 
the prudent oftener find Herod's hall a " more meet place," than 
" Christ's stable."f He has, nevertheless, echoed, in his own 
beautiful way, the language of some "poor shepherd," who in 
his lowliness found and prized the truth, to whom the babe of 
Bethlehem was more attractive than the pomp and ghtter of 
courts. 

Early in the reign of Elizabeth, did the baptists utter their 
protest, against the abhorrent spirit of persecution displayed 
by the reformers. Their words are embalmed for us in the 
pages of a bitter foe. The ireful spirit of the Scotch reformer 
had been chafed by their opinions on predestination ; so that in 
the year 1560, he poured forth upon them an objurgatory 
stream of indignant reproach. It was, " An AnsAver to a great 
number of blasphemous cavillations written by an Anabaptist, 
and Adversarie of God's eternal Predestination ; and confuted 
by John Knox."| With much fairness he has given, in 
separate paragraphs, the whole of the obnoxious production, 

* Hooker', Eccles. Pol. book viii. sect. 9. vol. hi. 328. Hanbury's 
edit. Keble considers this to be a part of a Sermon on Civil Obedience, 
t So the baptist to John Knox, in a work to be presently cited, 
t The edition before us is the third, of 1591. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. l7l 

appending to each its confutation. The immediate subject of 
the controversy must be passed over, not without some wonder 
at the large vocabulary of invective employed by the vigorous 
reformer. The passages following attract our attention ; and, 
because the rulers and polemics of that day, proscribed, de- 
molished, and misrepresented most dihgently, the writings and 
opinions of this abhorred sect, so as to leave but rare specimens 
of their productions, it must be allowed the baptist on this 
occasion to speak for himself, although at some length ; it is a 
voice from the deep darkness of oblivion. He addresses such 
men as Calnn and Beza, and Knox, the chiefest in this land of 
Calvin's disciples : — 

" Your chief ApoUos be persecutors, on whom the blood of 
Servetus crieth a vengeance, so doth the blood of others more 
whom I could name. But forasmuch as God hath partly 
already revenged their blood, and served some of their pei-se- 
cutore with the same measure wherewith they measured to 
others, I will make no mention of them at this time. And to 
declare then* wickedness not to have proceeded of ignorance and 
human infirmity, but of indured malice, they have for a 
perpetual memory of their cruelty, set forth books, affirming it 
to be lawful to persecute and put to death such as dissent fi-om 
others in controversies of religion, whom they call blasphemers 
of God. Notwithstanding, afore they came to authority, they 
were of another judgment, and did both say and write, that no 
man ought to be persecuted for his conscience' sake ; but now 
they are not only become persecutors, but also they have 
given, as far as lieth in them, the sword into the hand of 
bloody tyrants. Be these, I pray you, the sheep whom Chiist 
sent forth in the midst of wolves ? Can the sheep persecute the 
wolf ? Doth Abel kill Cain ? Doth David, though he might, 
kill Saul ? Shortly, doth he which is born of the Spirit kill 
him which is born after the flesh ? 

"Mark, how ye be fallen into most abominable tyranny, 



172 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

and yet ye see it not. Thus I am constrained of conscience to 
write. That if it shall please God to awake you out of your 
dream, that ye may perceive how one error hath drowned you 
in more error, and hath brought you to a sleeping secuiity, 
that when ye walk, even after the lusts, thirsting after blood, 
and persecuting poor men for their conscience' sake, ye be 
blinded, and see not yourselves ; but say, tush ! we be 
predestinate, whatsoever we do we are certain we cannot fall 
out of God's favor. Awake, therefore, and look what danger 
ye be in, and how by your poisoned doctrine ye infect the 
people of God, and draw them to a secure, idle, and careless 
Hfe." 

And what saith Knox to this : " You dissembling hypocrites 
cannot abide that the sword of God's vengeance shall strike the 
murderer, the blasphemer, and such others as God commandeth 
by his word to die ; not so, by your judgments ; he must hve, 
and may repent." The reformer then infers that Joan Boucher 
was meant, as one of those whose blood cried for vengeance ; and 
truly, the reformers' consciences might well be stricken with 
fear, when that dark deed rose to their remembrance. Our 
Knox seems somewhat aghast as he appeals to " all that fear 
God," against the judgment of the baptist upon those most 
valiant soldiers, Granmer, Latimer, Ridley, Rogers, Bradford, 
and others, most of whom took part in the condemnation of 
that Christian woman. Yet, "upon whom — that is Cranmer 
and his fellow-inquisitors — blasphemous mouth, thou sayest, 
God hath taken vengeance, which is an horrible blasphemy in 
the ears of all the godly !" 

But has the reformer no good strong arguments to withstand 
the claims of conscience ? Cannot the volume of holy truth 
supply some inexpugnable reasons for withholding its liberty ? 
With no such ineffectual weapons will he meet his man. 
Argument with a blasphemer ? No. " I will not now so much 
labor to confute by my pen, as [because] that my full purpose 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 173 

is to lay the same to thy charge, if I shall apprehend thee in 
any commonwealth where justice against blasphemers may be 
ministered, as God's word requireth. And hereof I give thee 
warning, lest that after thou shalt complain that under the 
cloak of friendship I have deceived thee. Thy manifest de- 
fection from God, and this thy open blasphemy .... have so 
broken and dissolved all famiharity which hath been betwixt us, 
that although thou wert my natural brother, I durst not 
conceal thine iniquity in this case."* Lei the baptist and 
quondam fi-iend of John Knox beware ! He may find a 
Geneva in Scotland, or perhaps in England, if he wait awhile. 

But the reformer after all feels constrained to attempt some 
sort of reply. He endeavors fii'st to prejudice his opponent's 
cause, by insinuating that he sympathized in the anti-trinitarian 
views of Servetus, although Knox knew to the contrary, since 
they were agreed on the unlawfulness of baptizing childi'en, on 
the preaching of the gospel, and the administration of the 
Lord's Supper. He then confesses that books have been 
written by both parties, "that lawful it is not, to the civil 
magistrate, to use the sword against heretics ;" but which that 
godly learned man, Theodore Beza, had answered.f He avers 
that Servetus and Joan of Kent were justly bm-nt, since God 
allowed the idolaters of the golden calf to be slain by the sons 

* An Answer, &c. pp. 189-204, 

t Beza wrote his Treatise, De Haereticis a Civili Magistratu puniendis, 
in 1553, in defence of the execution of Servetus, and to establish the right 
of the civil power to punish heresy. In the year 1601, it was translated 
into Dutch, for the purpose of exciting the magistrates of Friesland to 
persecute the baptists. Its editors say, that persecution is the means of 
restoring the dominion over conscience to God, " seeing it is only an 
attempt to execute the divine commands by divine methods I" Brandt, 
Hist, of Ref , ii. 8. Referring to Servetus, Beza says, " Quum igitur in 
carcerem conjectus esset, ecce statim quidam SatancB emissarii clamitare 
coeperunt iniquissimum esse." — Tract. Theol. Theodori Bezae, vol. i. p. 
83, ed. 1582. 



174 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

of Levi, at Moses' command. If, however, the baptist should 
infer, which he doubtless did, that since Abel, Isaac, and David, 
slew not Cain, nor Ishmael, nor Saul, it is not lawful " for any 
of God's elect to kill any man for his conscience' sake ;" then 
" I answer," says Knox, " that if under the name of conscience, 
ye include whatsoever seemeth good in your own eyes, then ye 
affirm a great absurdity," which very thing the baptist did not 
affii'm. But, " you say, that external crimes have no affinity 
•with matters of religion, for the conscience of every man is not 
alike persuaded in the service and honoring of God, neither yet 
in such controversies as God's word hath not plainly decided. 
But, I ask, if that be a just excuse why pernicious errors shall 
be obstinately defended, either yet that God's established 
religion shall be contemptuously despised ?"* 

So then, under the plea of some possibility of pernicious 
error, conscience must be trampled under foot ; and its utter- 
ances, should they be found, or imagined, to be dissenting fi'om 
an established religion, assumed to be of God, treated as 
blasphemy, and as the vilest of crimes. Infinitely more pernicious 
have been the domination over conscience, and the repression 
of its liberty, enforced by men claiming the authority of the 
Highest for their deeds of blood, than the multitude of erroi's 
they have sought to destroy. This hateful tyranny, disguised 
in pretensions to sanctity and truth, hath shed the blood of 
myriads of earth's noblest men, and of heaven's most worthy 
inhabitants. One more manifestation of thy wolfish spirit, 
Knox ! thy fearful imprecations, upon these poor peeled and 
scattered sheep, and we leave thee. " Your privy assemblies, 
and all those that in despite of Christ's blessed ordinance do 
frequent the same, are accursed of God !" f The maledictions 
of persecutors are a rich inheritance to the persecuted followers 
of the Lamb. 

The " privy assembhes " of the baptists, and the attendance 

* An Answer, &c. pp. 209-11. t Ibid. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. lYS 

at them, must have been somewhat numerous in the early 
yeai*s of Elizabeth's reign. " We found," says Jewel, writing 
to Martyr, " a large and inauspicious crop of Arians, anabaptists, 
and other pests, which I know not how, but as mushrooms 
spring up in the night and in darkness, so these sprung up in 
that darkness and unhappy night of the Marian times."* The 
measures adopted to root out this pestiferous " crop," accorded 
with the nature of a national church. They were denounced 
from the pulpit, the press sent forth its black load of falsehood 
and calumny, but was closed to every reply, and public law laid 
its ban upon them. St. Paul's Cross, where Latimer and 
Ridley, Bourn and Bonner, had each in turn, during the 
rapidly shifting scenes of that period, proclaimed the ruler's and 
the nation's faith, protestant or papal as it might be, became a 
place of attack upon them. In the beginning of the reign, 
John Veron had been chosen pubhc divinity lecturer at St. 
Paul's. On that renowned spot, this bold and popular preacher 
inveighed against the baptists, "who molest and trouble the 
godly quietness and peace of the church." f Their detestable 
heresies, as well as those of papists, were his not unfrequent 
theme. Free-will and predestination were the favorite topics 
handled in these discourses, which he afterwards committed to 
the press, to stay the "swynyshe gruntinge — the vain and 
blasphemous objections that the Epicures and anabaptists of our 
time can make." But while maintaining the scriptural truth, 
"that God hath from the beginning ordained and appointed 
some to be fellow-heirs with his Son Jesus Christ," he recoiled 

» Zurich. Lett. i. 92. 

t An Apology and Defence of the doctrine of Predestination, by John 
Veron, fol. 40, printed about 1560. Veron was a native of Sens, in 
France, but came to England, where he taught succeFsfully in many 
places the Latin language. By Ridley he was collated to the living of 
St. Alphage in London, in 1.552, and immediately on Elizabeth's 
accession, obtained a prebend in St. Paul's. To this was shortly added 
the readership of theology. Tanner, Bib. Scrip, p. 732, ed. 1748. 



176 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

not from the fearful statement " that some again are appointed 
(from the beginning) to be everlastingly damned."* Strange 
inconsistency, that men holding such opinions should endeavor 
to coerce the consciences of others. Is it by fiery trials, or by 
lingering imprisonments, that the elect of God are to be brought 
to faith ? Will the sight of the stake, the clanking of chains, or 
the severities of unrequited labor, change the immutable decrees 
of heaven? Did they doubt the execution of the doom, 
pronounced from eternity, which they said was the portion of 
these " accursed " heretics, that they hastened its approach by 
putting them to death ? Why not bide the time of the full 
developement of the unchanging purposes of God, rather than 
strive, by such unhallowed means, to accomplish what, for 
aught they knew, was predetermined should not be done, and 
by their cruelty rendered impossible, the conversion of these 
erring souls ? Were they the executioners of eternal doom, as 
well as the heralds of grace ? 

The archbishops and bishops dealt with the consciences of 
men, as if they thought them convertible by other means than 
God's word, when, in 1559, they directed "that incorrigible 
Arians, Pelagians, or free-will men, be sent into some one 
castle in North Wales, or Wallingford, and there to live of their 
own labor and exercise, and none other be suffered to report 
unto them but their keepers, until they be found to repent their 
errors." f This was not intended to be an unmeaning threat. 
Parkiiurst, the bishop of Norwich, who had most reluctantly 
yielded to the imposition of the habits, was warmly upbraided 
with remissness and want of activity in removing the baptists 
from his diocese, although he labored by preaching to destroy 
the impression their doctrines had made. J Many foreigners, 

* A Fruteful Treatise on Predestination. Dedicated to qiieen Eliza- 
beth. Imprinted by John Tisdale, no date, 
t Doc. Annals, i. 205. 
t Strype's Parker, I. i. 214. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. iVlT 

especially Dutch, had taken refuge in that part of the country, 
from the fanatical and bloody decrees of Phihp of Spain. Kot 
a few of them were baptists, who Avith some success propagated 
their opinions among the native population. Under the 
" halcyon " reign of Ehzabeth, they expected to find in 
England a peaceful shelter, from the frightful storm of persecu- 
tion, that elsewhere beat upon them. There was none. " The 
queen, by a proclamation, ordered these heretics, both aliens and 
natural-born English, to depart the kingdom within one-and- 
twenty days."* Imprisonment and forfeiture of all their 
property, were the penalties of a longer sojourn. Many, how- 
ever, evaded the command, screening themselves in various 
ways from the severities inflicted by the royal injunctions. The 
good bishop Jewel hoped, indeed, that it was the fact that they 
had retreated before " the hght of purer doctrine," for, he says, 
they were " nowhere to be found ; or at least, if anywhere, they 
are now no longer troublesome to our churches." f But it 
was not the " hght of purer doctrine," that had driven them 
into the gloom of the forest glade to worship thefr God, " hke 
owls at the sight of the sun ;" it was regal usurped might, and 
episcopal tyi-anny. 

Success still lingered behind the efforts of the queen and her 
obsequious bishops, when, in 1567, articles of inquiry were 
issued to the metropolitan, having especial respect to the state 
of the diocese of Nor^rich, where Parkhurst, its bishop, still 
" ^vinked at schismatics and anabaptists." In addition to the 
usual inquiries to be made concerning the mode of performing 
di\'ine service, the state of the gi-ammar schools, and the due 
performance of their respective ministries, by the various 
frmctionaries of the church, particular inquisition was ordered, 
as to whether any taught or said, that children being infants 
ought not to be baptized, that post-baptismal sins were not 

* Collier, vi. 332. 

t To Martyr, Nov. 6, 1660. Zur. Lett. i. 92. 

8* 



178 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

remissible by penance, that it was not lawful to swear, that 
civil magistrates may not punish certain crimes with death, or 
that it was lawful for any man, without the appointment and 
caUing of the magistrate, to take upon him any ministry in 
Christ's church. * These, in the royal estimation, were most 
dangerous opinions, demanding every exertion to repress them. 

For the third time, a special visitation was ordered in the 
following year, in every parish throughout the realm, wherever 
there was any confluence of strangers, to discover the teachers 
of such evil doctrines. Great numbers of Dutch people, under 
which designation were included both Germans and Flemings, 
were daily repairing to this country for a refuge from the san- 
guinary cruelties of the duke of Alva. Among them, it was 
feared were some infested with poisonous errors, " contrary to the 
faith of Christ's church, as anabaptists, and such other sectaries." 
Their mode of Hfe, the length of their residence in the realm, 
the cause of their resort hither, and to what churches they went 
for worship, were to be carefully noted and registered. The 
suspected, and the unconformable to the estabhshed order, were 
to be speedily brought to trial, and if not reconciled by " chari- 
table teaching," to depart in twenty days on pain of severe 
punishment. "This provision," says Colher, "was no more 
than necessary ; for the Dutch anabaptists held private conven- 
ticles in London, and perverted a gi-eat many."f 

It is most probable, that a congregation discovered in the isle 
of Ely, in the year 15 7 3, consisted of some of these converts. 
They refused oaths, condemned capital punishments, exercised 
a Christian hberty in the preaching and' exposition of scripture, 
and some were supposed to maintain an inequahty of persons 
in the godhead ; this latter is very doubtful. Their meetings 
were private ; closed to all but such as agreed with them in 
sentiment.]; It gives us but httle concern that many charges 

» Doc. Annals, i. 306. t Collier, vi. 462. Doc. Ann&ls, i. 309. 
X Strype's Parker, II. 287. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 179 

of immorality are made against them. It has ever been the 
custom of the enemies of true godliness thus to vihfy its pro- 
fessors. Were these charges admissible, we should be compelled 
to beUe^•e that an earnest heed to the* word of God, which it 
was made a crime in these people to have shown, was productive 
of results the opposite to those which experience daily justifies. 
Light and darkness cannot long intermingle in the human heart, 
without one or the other gaining the mastery. The fear of 
the Lord is clean ; sin must flee before the pure, eye-enlight- 
ening commandments of God. 

The very partial success of these repressive measures, seems 
to have led to that dark catastrophe, to which in the progress 
of events we are now brought ; the burning alive of two Flemish 
baptists in Smithfield, an oblation of blood to the demon of 
protestant intolerance. Lingering imprisonments, fines, and 
banishment, had not been found efiectual ; the fires of Smith- 
field might perhaps scare the pertinacious errorist, and by their 
burning radiance neutralize the glimmerings of the true light, 
which here and there feebly shone. The zeal of puritans, too, 
might be allayed, by this evidence of the inexorable purpose of 
the queen, to permit no dissentients from the national creed 
•within her dominions. 

It was on Easter-day, April 3, 1575, that a congregation of 
Flemish baptists, numbering some thirty persons, men and 
women, assembled in a private house in the suburbs of London, 
just without Aldgate Bars.* The slaughterings and devasta- 
tions of the Duke of Alva, in the Low Countries, had caused 
severe distress, and loss of trade. Urged by the desire of 
obtaining a hvehhood for their wives and children, and liberty 
to worship God in the simplicity of faith and love, these exiles 
had left Flanders for England. Outcasts and strangers, they 
sought a heavenly citizenship, and in their sojourn met to com- 
fort each other, and to unite their prayers at the throne of 

* Holinshed'9 Chron. iv. 326, ed. 1808. 



■180 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

grace. Their meeting was espied by the neighbors, although 
conducted with secresy. While commending each other to 
God, their devotions were suddenly interrupted by the entrance 
of a constable, who, addressing them as devils, demanded 
which was their teacher. Seven-and-twenty names were put 
down at his command, and taking their promise to remain, he 
proceeded with a few to the magistrate. He shortly returned, 
and with opprobrious and cruel words drove the rest before him 
to the gaol. Two escaped on the way ; the rest were " led as 
sheep to the slaughter." On the third day they were released, 
heavy bail being tak^n for their appearance, whenever and 
wherever it should please the authorities to determine.^ 

Information of the capture was conveyed to the queen's 
council ; and at the suggestion, apparently, of archbishop 
Parker, a commission was issued on the 27th of April, to 
Sandys, the bishop of London, assisted by several civilians and 
judges, " to confer with the accused, and to proceed judicially, 
if the case so required."! But a few days elapsed before the 
summonses to appear were issued, and these poor people stood 
criminally arraigned, for worshipping God according to their 

* Where not otherwise stated, the narrative in the text is derived from 
three relations preserved in the Dutch Marty rology. The first is that of 
the martyrologist. The second is by Gerrit van Byler, one of the 
prisoners. ^ The third by one James de Somer, a member of the Dutch 
church in London, contained in a letter to his mother, residing at Ghent, 
in Flanders ; he writes as an eye-witness of the facts he relates. The 
title of the work is. The Bloody Theatre, or Mirror of Baptists Martyrs. 
By Thielem J. van Braght. Amsterdam, two volumes, folio, 1685. 
The first volume is a history of the church from the first to the fifteenth 
centuries. The second, and by far the largest of the two, is devoted to 
the martyrdoms of baptists during the sixteenth century. The account 
now laid before the reader may be regarded as a fair example of the 
many deeply interesting narratives it contains. Both volumes are adorned 
by a large number of beautifully executed and spirited etchings. 

t Soames, Eliz. His. p. 213. Macintosh, Eliz. ch. xviii. p. 375. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 181 

convictions. The court assembled in the consistory of St. Paul's ; 
for it was a case of heresy. Besides the commissioners, certain 
members of the Dutch congregation were present as interpreters, 
a French preacher, and two aldermen. The prisoners first laid 
before the court a confession of their faith. The bishop was not 
satisfied. He produced four articles, requiring then' subscrip- 
tion ; if obstinate in their refusal, they should be burnt alive. 
Such were the instructions he had received. 

" They proposed to us four questions," says one of the 
prisoners, " telling us to say yea, or nay : — 

" 1. Whether Christ had not taken his flesh and blood of 
the Virgin Mary ? 

" We answered : He is the son of the living God. 

" 2. Ought not httle children to be baptized ? 

" We answered : JSTot so ; we find it not written in holy 
scriptm-e. 

" 3. May a Christian serve the office of a magistrate 'i* 

" We answered, That it did not obhge our consciences ; but, 
as we read, we esteemed it an ordinance of God. 

" 4. Whether a Christian, if needs be, may not swear ? 

" We answered. That it also obhged not our consciences ; 
for Christ has said, in Matthew, Let your words he yea^ yea y 
jiay^ nay. Then we were silent. 

" But the bishop said, that our misdeeds therein were so 
gTeat, that we could not enjoy the favor of God. O Lord ! 
avenge it not. He then said to us all, that we should be 
imprisoned in the Marshalsea." 

Many threats were uttered during the examination ; they 
were vexed with subtle questions, and urged to recant on peril 
of a cruel death. That they might expect no favour, the 
bishop sternly informed them of the firm determination of the 
queen and her council to compel all strangers to sign a renun- 

* Our author understands the office of a criminal magistrate to be 
meant here. 



182 



STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 



ciation of these articles. The conforming might remain in the 
land, and be free from taxes ; but the micomj)hant should die a 
frightful death. The prisoners were unmoved, and were con- 
veyed to the Marshalsea for the testimony of Christ. One 
young brother, tlie first questioned, was sent into solitary con- 
finement at Westminster, for his bold attestation to the truth. 

And now severe trials and temptations beset them. Private 
friendships, the arguments of learned men, and the dark back- 
gi'ound of a fearful death, combined to shake their constancy. 
" Master Joris came to us and said. If we would join the church, 
that is, the Dutch church, our chains should be struck off, and 
our bonds loosed. The bishop, he said, had given him com- 
mand so to do. But we remained stedfast to the truth of 
Jesus Christ. He is indeed our Captain, and no other ; yea, in 
Him is all our trust. My dear brethren, and sweet sisters, let 
us bravely persevere until we conquer. The Lord will then 
give us to drink of the new wine. O Lord, strengthen our 
faith. As we have received the Lord Jesus Christ, let us go 
forward courageously, trusting in Him." 

Five, however, yielded to the solicitations of the Netherland 
preachers, quailing at the fearful prospect set before them. 
They consented to forego theii* convictions, and subscribe the 
articles. Notwithstanding the bishop's promise, that subscrip- 
tion should release them from all pains and penalties, they were 
brought to St. Paul's Cross on the 25th of May, to make a 
pubhc recantation. Taken in their toils, these recovered sheep 
were not gently lifted on the shepherds' shoulders, and brought 
home with joyful shouts, as Christ teaches us the good pastor 
will do ; but before many thousands of people, in the church- 
yard of St. Paul's, they were set for a gazing stock, a fagot 
bound on each one's shoulder, as a sign that they were worthy 
of the fire. At the close of the bishop's sermon, their prescribed 
recantation was read. They declared themselves to have been 
seduced by the spirit of error, and that their renounced opinion* 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY, 183 

were damnable and detestable heresies ; but that the whole 
doctrine and rehgion established in England, as also that 
received and practised by the Dutch congregation in London, 
was sound, true, and according to the word of God. It was 
afterwards repeated in the Dutch church, to which they promised 
to unite ; and bail taken for the performance of the vow.* 

Two several times were the rest taken before their inquisitors, 
and for three weeks endured rigorous imprisonment, the sore 
chafing of iron fetters, with mingled entreaties and threats, to 
induce them to a renunciation of their faith. On the 11th May, 
a further commission was issued, to proceed to their condemna- 
tion. On Whitsun-eve, the 21st, ten women and one man were 
formally condemned to the fii'e, one female shrank from the 
trial.f A few days after the public penance at St. Paul's, the 
remainder were again jbrought up to the bishop's court, the 
place of Bonner's savage cruelties in queen Mary's time. Day 
was just dawning when, bound two and two, they entered the 
place of doom. " We remember the word of the Lord," says 
Gerrit van Byler, " When they shall lead you before lords and 
princes^ fear not what you shall say, for in that hour it shall 
be given you. So we trusted in the Lord^. The questions were 
again proposed, and subscription demanded ; but we said, 
That we would cleave to the word of the Lord.'' 

In the plenitude of royal authority — dare any one call it 
apostolical ? — delegated to him, the bishop sentenced them to 
excision from the church of Christ, and to death ; and formally 
delivered them to the secular arm for punishment. 

Fourteen women and a youth, bound together, were led 

* Holinshed, iv. 326,327. 

t There is much difficulty in leeonciling the accounts of the English 
chroniclers, especially as to the numbers tried and punished. It is very 
likely that some others had been discovered, and that they were brought 
before the same commissioners, whose powers were enlarged for the 
purpose. 



184 STRUGGLES AND TfllUMPHS 

away to Newgate ; the remaining five were kept in the bishop^s 
custody. And now for five or six days they suffered great 
anxiety and temptation. Oft threatened with a cruel and fiery 
death, they feared from day to day, the hour of their offering 
up was at hand. They were severely treated, and compelled to 
hear the blasphemies of the vilest criminals. Ten days thus 
passed, when on the eve of the first of June, about teii o'clock, 
the gaoler, with his officers, entered their place of confinement, 
noted down their goods, and bid them prepare to die on the 
morrow. Seeing that their courage, and faith in God, remained 
unshaken, he then announced to them, that the queen, in her 
clemency, had commanded a milder penalty — ^banishment."^' 

In the morning, surrounded by halberdiers, they were led by 
the sheriffs to the water-side, and put on board a ship at St. 
Catherine's. The youth followed, tied to a cart's tail, and was 
whipped to the place of embarkation.f Thus the ties of nature 
were severed : some of the poor exiles had to mourn in anguish 
over husbands and fathers, left in the hands of their persecutors, 
for whom yet more cruel severities were reserved. 

The next day, June 2nd, the five men,| who remained of this 
company, were again led bound into the consistory. The ter- 
rors of the stake were vividly set before them ; their only escape, 
subscription to the articles. They were lu-ged, they were 
threatened ; it was unavaihng. " It is a small matter thus to 
die," said Jan Peters, with a courageous mind. The bishop 

* In a sermon preached at the Spittle in London, probably about this 
time, Sandys remarked : — " Such as are of no religion, of no church, 
godless and faithless people, some papists, some anabaptists ; — these are 
to be expelled and cast out of the country, lest for their wickedness God 
plague the whole realm." Sermons, p. 266. 

•}• Some hints it appears were given to the captain of the vessel, that if 
the banished ones did not reach the land of their fathers in safety, he need 
not fear any inquiry. He was, however,proof against the base instigation 

J It is manifest that Strype is mistaken in supposing that these were 
the five who had previously recanted. Strype's Annals, IL i. 564. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 185 

sharply inquired, " ^Tiat does he say ?" Peters rephed. The 
bishop Hstened with some moderation, and then stoutly said, 
" We must shave such heretics, and cut them off as an evil 
thing from the chm-ch."* Said Hendi'ik Terwoort, " How 
canst thou cut us off from your church, since we are not of it ?" 
The bishop, " It was all the same ; there were none in England 
who were not members of the chm'ch of God." And now were 
these fi'iends of Christ unjustly condemned, and led away to 
Newgate to await the day of death. 

Here they were strongly secured, heavily ironed, and thrown 
into a deep and noisome den, swarming with foul and disgusting 
vermin. " Then we thought om-selves," says Byler, " within 
one or two days of the end, after which we earnestly longed, for 
the prison was giievous ; but it was not yet the Lord's vnH. 
After eight days, one of om- brethi-en was released by death, 
trusting in God ; his dying testimony filled us with joy." Even 
the society of thieves and malefactors was deemed too pure for 
them, both the bishop and a preacher saying, that care must be 
taken, lest the criminals should be corrupted by the association. 
Great indeed must have been the horror their opinions had 
inspired, when' an English preacher, occasionally v-isiting their 
dungeon, would lay his hands upon them, and falhng upon his 
knees, ciy aloud, " Sirs, be ye converted ;" and then, exorcising 
the de\"il "svithin them, exclaim, " Hence, depart, thou evil fiend !" 

But exertions of another kind were not wanting on their 
behalf. Strenuous efforts were made to bring their case before 
the queen. An earnest supplication, and a confession of their 

* A few years later, when archbishop of York, Sandys, in a pastoral 
letter, said : — Those who are stubborn and inveterate foes are to be 
bruised with a rod of iron, at least to be restrained that their leprosy 
infect not the sound ; nets must be spread by which the papal stragglers, 
the firebrands of sedition, and pests of the church, may be snared and 
fall." The bishop was at least impartial in his zeal for the church's 
purity. Sandys' Sermons, p. 441. 



186 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

faith on the four articles, were prepared ; but the attempt 
present them to her was met with a stern and passionate rebuke 
to the ladies of her court, who ventured to intrude on the royal 
prerogative. Reports of the most unjust kind were rumored 
about ; that they disowned God and Christ, and rejected all 
government and authority of magistrates.* Her majesty was 
not free from these impressions, and they were sedulously 
fostered in her mind, by parties thirsting for innocent blood. 
The bishop was next applied to. A nobleman, Lord de Bodley, 
undertook to plead their cause, and, if possible, move his com-, 
passion. A simple confession of their faith was laid before him. 
But bishop Sandys refused to interfere. He even demanded 
their assent to the doctrine, that a Christian magistrate may 
rightly punish the obstinate heretic with the sword.f 

A month's reprieve was, however, granted them, at the 
earnest suit of the venerable martyrologist, John Fox. His 
pious admiration of the Marian martyrs was shocked, at the 
thought, that the scene of their triumphs would be defiled with 
the blood of these fanatic and miserable wretches. To roast 
alive was more accordant to papal practices, he said, than to the 
custom of the gospellers. He therefore urged upon her majesty 
the adoption of some other mode of punishment. Might not 

* " Barbarous and wicked is the opinion of the anabaptists, which con- 
demn all superiority, authority, and government in the church. For what 
is this else, but utterly to expel, both out of church and commonwealth, 
all godliness, all peace, all honesty?" Sandys' Sermons, .p. 85. 
Preached at York. 

t This was no hasty opinion of the bishop ; for thus he instructs the 
parliament at an early period of the reign :— " Such as teach, but leach 
not the good and right way ; such as are open and public maintainers of 
errors and heresy ; such in the judgment of God, are thought unworthy 

to live I have no cruel heart : blood be far from me : I mind 

nothing less. Yet needs must it be granted that the maintainers and 
teachers of errors and heresy, are to be repressed in every Christian com- 
monwealth !'* Sandys' Sermons, p. 40. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 18*7 

close imprisonment, or bonds, or perpetual banishment, or 
burning of the hand, or scourging, or even slavery, suffice ? 
Any or all of these would be preferable to death by fire. But 
not one word does her " Father Fox " breathe of tenderness for 
the rights of conscience. He also addressed the victims. He 
laboured to persuade them to acknowledge their error, and 
bow to the voice of scriptm-e ; to cease " to cultivate certain 
fanatic conceptions, nay, rather deceptions," of their own 
minds ; " for it is sufficiently apparent, that for long you have 
disturbed the church by your great scandal and offi^nce." To 
the lord chief justice Monson, one of their judges, he sent a 
copy of his lettere to the queen and council, further reprobating 
the punishment of death, and advocating a milder punishment.* 
The sufferers highly estimated his kindly interference ; but 
while they thanked him for his condescension, they endeavoured 
to change his unfavourable opinion.j- 

The month expired, without any alteration in the resolution 
of these servants of God, or in their fidelity to the truths they 
had received. Early in the month of July, it was intimated to 
two of them, that they must die. Incarcerated in separate cells, 
they were not permitted to enjoy each other's society, and words 
of love. On the 15th, the queen signed, at Gorhambury, the 
warrant and writ for the execution to proceed.^ Jan Peters 
and Hendrik Terwoort, were the two selected. 

* Prebendary Townsend's Life of Fox, in vol. i. of the 8vo. edit, of 
Acts and Mon. p. 198. 

t Fox's letter to the queen has been several times printed ; as by 
Fuller in his Church History, ii. 507. Crosby has given a translation of 
it. Hist, of Eng. Baptists, i. 80. Fox's letters to the lord chief justice 
and to the council, still exist among the Harleian MSS. in the British 
Museum, and have never yet, we believe, been printed. The excellent 
and interesting answer of the prisoners to Fox, we have placed in the 
Addenda, Note A. Also their supplication to the queen, and confession 
of faith. 

t Doc. Annals, i. 360. Prebendary Townsend says, " I have 



188 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

Jan Peters* was an aged man, and poor, with nine children. 
His fii-st wife, some years before, had been burnt for her rehgion, 
at Ghent, in Flanders ; and his then wife had lost her first hus- 
band by martyrdom for the truth. They had fled to England, 
hoping there to worship without danger. His circumstances 
were laid before the bishop, and he had earnestly entreated 
permission to leave the country with his wife and children ; but 
the bishop was inexorable. 

Hendrik Terwoort was a man of good estate, five or six-and- 
twenty years of age, and a goldsmith by trade. He had been 
married about eight or ten weeks before his imprisonment. 
But neither domestic affection, nor the solicitations of his friends, 
nor the dread of death, weakened his resolution. 

On Sunday, the lYth, tidings were brought them, that within 
three days they would be burnt, unless they desired delay. To 
this Terwoort replied, " Since this your design must come to 
pass, so we wish you to speed the more quickly with the matter, 
for we would indeed rather die than live, to be released from 
this frightful den." He, however, asked till Friday. "We again 
quote the affecting naiTative of their companion in tribulation. 
" Upon Tuesday, a stake was set up in Smithfield, but the exe- 
cution was not that day. On Wednesday, many people were 
gathered together to witness the death of our two friends, but it 
was again deferred. This was done to terrify, and draw our 
friends and us from the faith. But on Friday, our two friends, 
Hendrik Terwoort and Jan Peters, being brought out from their 
prison, were led to the sacrifice. As they went forth, Jan 

examined the writ by virtue of which they were burnt : and am sorry to 
say that it is worded as the old writs for burning the episcopal and other 
protestants in the reign of Mary." Life of Fox, p. 199, vol, i. 8vo. edit. 
of Acts and Mon. 

* By the chronicler, Stow, he is called John Wielmacker, but in the 
warrant for execution John Peters, as in the Dutch narratives. Perhaps 
the former indicates his trade, that of a wheelwright. Van Braght does 
not mention his occupation. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 189 

Peters said, * The holy prophets, and also Christ, our Saviour, 
have gone this way before us, even from the beginning, from 
Abel until now.' " 

It was early morning when they reached the scene of their 
triumph. They were fastened to one stake, neither strang- 
ling, nor gunpowder being used to diminish their torture. As 
defenceless sheep of Christ, following the footsteps of their 
master, resolutely, for the name of Christ, they went to die. 
An English preacher was present, to embitter, if possible, by 
his cruel mockings, the closing moments of their martyr-life, 
and martyr-death. Before all the people he exclaimed, 
** These men believe not on God." Saith Jan Peters, " We 
believe in one God, our heavenly Father Almighty, and in 
Jesus Christ his Son." While standing bound at the stake, 
the articles were again, for the last time, presented to them, 
and pardon promised on subscription. Peters again spake, 
** You have labored hard to drive us to you, but now, when 
placed at the stake, it is labor in vain." One of the preachers 
attempted an excuse : " That all such matters were deter- 
mined by the council, and that it was the queen's intention 
they should die." But, said Peters, "You are the teachers 
of the queen, whom it behooves you to instruct better, 
therefore shall our blood be required at your hands." 

And now with courage they entered on the conflict, and 
fought through the trial, in the midst of the burning flame ; 
an oblation to the Lord, which they living off'ered unto him. 
Accepting not of deliverance, for the truth's sake, they counted 
not their lives dear unto them, that they might finish their 
course with joy. 

" For what were thy terrors, Death ? ' [ 

And where was thy triumph, O Grave ? 
"When the vest of pure white, and the conquering wreath 
Were the prize of the scorner and slave \" — Dale. 

We are saved comment on this painful scene. All writers, 



IQO STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

of every party, are agreed in condemnatioii of its folly and 
criminality. " How utterly absurd and unchristian," saith 
our Dutch martyrologist, "do all such cruel proceedings, and 
sentences as are here seen, appear, when contrasted with the 
Christian faith. The Christian host is described as sheep and 
lambs, sent forth among cruel and devouring wolves : Who 
will be able with a good conscience to believe, that these 
English preachers were the true sheep of Christ, since in this 
matter they brought forth so notably the fruit of wolves ?"* 

But although none defend the deed, some defame the suf- 
ferers to lessen its enormity. They were actuated, it is said, 
by a spirit of insubordination, and their principles were of a 
disorganizing tendency ; the overthrow of church and com- 
monwealth must have followed their prevalence, and it was 
incumbent on the ruling authority to crush the germ of sedi- 
tion and rebellion in its earliest form. And so it has been 
ever said of the members of the spiritual kingdom of the 
Lord Jesus Christ ; and without question, while oppression 
reigns supreme, while injustice ravages the homes and pos- 
sessions of a people, while the honor of God and the rights 
of conscience are trampled* under foot, — the gospel of eter- 
nal verity, the word of the God of equity, and the pure un- 
worldly doctrine of Christ, must overturn, overturn, until He 
shall reign, whose is the right. But when under the garb of 
religion, when in the name of holy truth, when with the 
words of heaven upon their lips, men go forth to slay the in- 
nocent, to destroy the lowly disciple of Jesus, to forbid the 
word of the living God to echo in the soul the voice of the 
Eternal, and to stifle the gro'anings of the human spirit under 

* The other two sufferers were for a long time kept in prison. The 
last we hear of them is, that attempting to escape, by filing the bars of 
their dungeon window, they were discovered, and heavily ironed. 
James de Somer, in conjunction with a friend, made several ineflfectual 
eSortB to obtain their release. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 191 

its bond-chnin of sin and woe, sighing for liberty to serve its 
God, and, as the free angels of his presence, to obey His will 
— then human guilt has reached its highest mark, and dis- 
played the most intensely aflfecting feature of the ruin which 
has befallen our race. It is an efibit to crush the only means 
of man's restoration, to quench the spark of reviving life 
amid the aoonizins^ death-throes of the human soul. 

But what was the crime of which these victims of intoler- 
ance so dreadful were guilty? Did they aim at the queen's 
life ? Did they assemble to plot the ruin of the state which 
sheltered them ? Did they league with any whose glor]^ is 
in their shame, to assassinate, to rob, to violate the rights of 
their neighbor? Let us hear them speak from their abyss 
of sorrow, " We, poor and despised strangers, who are in 
persecution for the testimony of Jesus Christ, entreat from 
God for all men, of every race and degree, that the Lord 
may grant perpetual peace and every happiness, and that we 
may live among them in peace and godliness, to the praise 
and glory of the Lord. Our fatherland, our friendships, our 
property, have we been compelled to forsake, through great 
tyranny, and as lambs before wolves, have fled, only for the 
pure evangelic truth of Christ, and not for uproars and sedi- 
tions, as we are accused We know that we follow 

no strange gods, neither have we an heretical faith, contrary 
to the word of Christ. But we believe in one God, the 
Father Almighty, Creator of the heavens and the earth ; in 
one Jesus Christ, his only beloved Son ; who was conceived 
of the Holy Ghost, born of the undefiled Virgin Mary, suf- 
fered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was 
buried. On the third day he arose from the dead, ascended 
to heaven, and is sitting at the right hand of God, the Father 
Almighty ; from thence he will come again to judge the 
quick and the dead. We believe in the Holy Ghost. We be- 
lieve that Jesus Christ is true God and man. . . . We do 



192 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

not boast ourselves to be free from sin, but confess that every 
moment we are sinners before God. But we must abstain 
from wilful sins, if we would be saved ; viz., from adultery, i 
fornication, witchcraft, sedition, bloodshed, cursing, and steal- 
ing .. . hatred and envy. They who do such things shall 
not possess the kingdom of God." Here we leave this noble 
evangelic confession of the martyr, Hendrik Terwoort. He 
hath fairly^ won the martyr's crown. Although despised, 
trampled upon, and his name held accursed among men, his 
is the palm-branch of victory, and the white robe, washed 
and made white in the blood of the Lamb. 

Not less nobly does he plead the rights of conscience. 
" Observe well the command of God : Thou shalt love the 
stranger as thyself. Should he then who is in misery, and 
dwelling in a strange land, be driven thence with his com- 
panions, to their great damage? Of this Christ speaks, 
Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so 
to them : for this is the law and the prophets. Oh ! that they 
would deal with us according to natural reasonableness, and 
evangelic truth, of which onr persecutors so highly boast. 
For Christ and his disciples persecuted no one ; but, on the 
contrary, Jesus hath thus taught. Love your enemies, bless 
them that curse you, ^c. This doctrine Christ left behind 
with his apostles, as they testify. Thus Paul, Unto this pres- 
ent hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buf- 
feted, and have no certain dwelling-place ; and labor, working 
with our own hands : being reviled, we bless ; being persecuted^ 
we suffer it. From all this it is clear, that those who have the 
one true gospel doctrine and faith will persecute no one, but 
will themselves be persecuted."* 

* Besides the narratives, the supphcation to the queen, and the reply 
to Fox, already referred to, the martyrologist has preserved a writing 
or letter, of considerable length, by Terwoort, from which the two 
passages above are extracts ; and also a confession of faith, embracing 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 193 

The reader is now able to judge of the truth of the innu- 
merable crimes laid to the charge of these the Lord's afflicted 
o^es, tlie baptists of that age. Thus runs the accusation of 
the celebrated Whitgift : They give honor and reverence to 
none in authority; — they seek the overthrow of common- 
wealths and states of government ; — they are full of pride and 
contempt ; — their whole intent is schismatic, and to be free 
from all laws, to live as they list ; — they feign an austerity of 
life and manners, and are great hypocrites, &;c. But the 
same high authority, the future archbishop of Canterbury, 
adds these following particulars as aggravations of their guilt : 
— In all their doings they pretend the glory of God, the edify- 
ing of the church, and the purity of the gospel ; — when pun- 
islied for their errors, they greatly complain, that nothing is 
used but violence : that the truth is oppressed, innocent and 
godly men, who would have all things reformed according to 
the word of God, cannot be heard nor have liberty to speak, 
and that their mouths are stopped, not by God's word, but by 
the authority of the magistrate ; — they assert, that the civil 
magistrate has no authority in ecclesiastical matters, and 
ought not to meddle in causes of religion and faith, and that 
no man ought to be compelled to faith and religion ; — and 
lastly, they complain much of persecution, and brag that they 
defend their cause, not with words only, but by the shedding 
of their blood. ^ 

These were the high crimes and misdemeanors of which 
the baptists were accused. They need neither counsel nor 
apologist. The indictment is at the same time their accusa- 

the most important doctrines of holy writ ; this latter is deposited in 
the Addenda to this vohime, as it will serve to show the general or- 
thodoxy of the baptists at that period. Note A. See Het Bloedig 
Toonel. Deel ii. pp. 694 — 712. [Broadmead Records, Add. p. 503.] 

* An Answere to a certen Libel, <tc. by John Whitgift, D. of Divini- 
tie, pp. 3-5. ed. 1572. 

9 



194 STRUGGLES AND TRIUBIPHS 

tion, and their acquittal. Their deeds were noble ; their sen- 
timents just. Their affliction and triumphant deaths, reflect 
glory on the holy truths of humanity's Great Martyr, in 
whose footsteps of blood they trod ; but shame upon the 
men, who, with loud professions of fidelity to Him, slew the 
servants he had sent. 

We have perhaps lingered too long over these events, but 
justice, oft somewhat tardy in her pace, seemed to demand 
that the sufferers should at last be heard in defence, after 
nearly three centuries of defamation and obloquy ; and that 
the meagre and hostile accounts of our historians be corrected 
by authentic narrations, preserved in a foreign tongue, and now 
for the first time presented to the English reader.* 

From this time until the reign of James, the notices of the 
baptists in our writers and annalists, are but few and indis- 
tinct. Although " they were rife in many places of the land," 
as we are told by Mr. Cartwright in 15 75,1 the severities 
they endured doubtless caused many to emigrate, and the rest 
to hide in dens and caves of the earth. Yet on the literature 
of the time, their name was ever floating as a term of re- 
proach. Their principles were thrown from disputant to 
disputant, evidently felt though not seen, to be the only jus- 
tifiable basis of the changes made or urged by the conflicting 
parties. Their views formed the ultimate idea of the great 
movement of the reformation, although eschewed by every 
other party, as subversive of that union of things sacred and 
secular, to which both reformers and puritans clung with a 

* A translation of the deeply affecting narratives of Van Braght has 
been often desired, both in England and America ; it is hoped that the 
Hanserd KnoUys Society may be able to effect this important object, 
[A translation of this work is now, {Nov. 1850) in course of preparation, 
by the Hanserd Knollys Society, and will soon be published. — American 
Mitor.] 

f Second Replie. Epist. ed. 1575. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 195 

blind pertinacity. It was anabaptistical, to hold that the 
church ought to be constituted of believers only ; — to sepa- 
rate from the national church because of its many unscriptu- 
ral practices, unauthorized constitutions, and the impiety of 
the majority of its members ; — to demand that the minister 
of the word should be a believer of the truths he preached, 
and a practiser of the piety he inculcated : — to give to the 
whole community of the faithful the power of electing their 
pastor, of binding and loosing, of discipline and instruction, 
and to call such as were gifted by divine grace, whether 
learned or unlearned, to the teacher's office ;-— and lastly, to 
exclude the magistrate from the exercise of any civil power 
in the church.* 

We may adopt the language of Bishop Saunderson on this 
subject: — "The Reverend Archbishop Whitgift, and the 
learned Hooker, men of great judgment, and famous in their 
times, did long since foresee and declare their fear, that if 
puritanism should prevail among us, it would soon draw in 
anabaptism after it. This Cartwright and the disciplinarians 
denied, and were offended at. But these good men judged 
right ; they considered, only as prudent men, that anabap- 
tism had its rise from the same principle the puritans held, 
and its growth from the same course they took, together with 
the natural tendency of their principles and practices towards 
it ; especially that One Principle, as it was by them mis- 
understood ; that the scripture was adequata agendorum regu- 
la, so as nothing might lawfully be done, without express 
warrant, either from some command or example therein con- 
tained ; which clue, if followed as far as it would go, would 



* See A G-odly Treatise, wherein are examined and confuted many 
execrable fancies, given out and holden partly by Henry Barrowe and 
John Greenwood : partly by other of the anabaptistical order. Written 
by Robert Some, Doctor of Divinity, 4to. London, 1589. 



196 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

certainly in time carry them as far as the anabaptists had 
then gone."* 

Thus it was that Whitgift, in his controversy with Cart- 
wright, drew a full length portrait of these men, as the ori- 
ginal picture of the " holy discipline ;" but marred by the 
superfluous touches of the puritans. He likewise appeared as 
the antagonist of the baptists in a sermon at St. Paul's in 
1583. "I" Hence the universal execration which attended them, 
and the solemn asseveration of the puritan justices of Nor- 
folk, " We allow not of the anabaptists, nor of their commu-^ 
nity ; we allow not of the Brownists, the overthrowers both 
of church and commonwealth ; we abhor all these, and we 
punish them. "J Every man's hand was against them. 

Still they lingered in various places, nor could all the 
diligence of their foes wholly extirpate them. " I would," 
says the author of the Defence of the Ecclesiastical Disciphne, 
in 1588, "I would we could say for our church, that there 
are none of the family, no recusants, yea, no anabaptists, nor 
libertines, amongst us."§ A congregation was discovered in 
1686, of which one Glover was the minister, which appears 
to have been formed from this persecuted sect. He was im- 
prisoned by the order of Whitgift, but released through the 
interference of Lord Burghley.|| Two years after, (1588,) 
some further discoveries were made of several conventicles of 
" wicked sects and opinions." In the summer time they met 
in the fields. Seated on a bank, they read, and listened to 
exhortations, from the word of God, by some of their number. 
In the winter they assembled in a house at the early hour of 
five ; the day was passed in prayer and scripture exposition. 
They dined together, then collected money to pay for their 
food, carrying the surplus to any of their brethren who were 

* Quoted in Early Hist, of Rhode Island, p. 112, Boston, 1848. 
f Strype's Whitgift, i. 264. X Pa^^e of a Register, p. 129. 

§ P. 183. II Strype's Annals, III. i. 634. 



OF RKLTOTOrS LIBERTY. 197 

in bonds for the testimony of a good conscience. They used 
no form of prayer, not even the Lord's prayer; their devo- 
tions were extemporaneous. " The use of stinted prayer, or 
said service, is but babbhng in the Lord's sight," they said, 
"and hath neither promise of blessing, nor edification." 
They regarded Christ as the supreme governor of the church; 
the queen had neither authority to appoint ministers, nor to 
frame any ecclesiastical government for it. A private man, 
being a brother, might preach, and *' beget faith;" but every 
man in his own calling was to preach the gospel. It was 
unlawful to attend the public prayer and preaching, because 
the clergy taught, " that the state of the realm of England is 
the time church ;" this they denied ; the preachers were false 
preachers, who proclaimed not the glad tidings of the gospel. 
They were under no obhgation to wait for the magistrate to 
reform the church ; whenever stones were ready, they ought 
to go forward with the building, as the apostles did; but the 
preachers made Christ attend upon princes, and be sub- 
ject to their laws and government. They held it unlawful to 
baptize children. They refused the salutary water to a child, 
twelve years of age, who tearfully sought to repair its pa- 
rents' neglect ; and, when the child was publicly baptized at 
the command of the Chamber of London, the mother fled for 
fear of punishment.* 

Thus the leaven of the true doctrine slowly and secretly 
spread. Many also of the Brownists, on emigration, became 
baptists. Thus Mr. Johnson, writing in 1606, says, "About 
thirteen years since, this church, through persecution in 
England, was driven to come into these countries [Low 
Countries.] A while after they were come hither, divers of 
them fell into the errors of the anabaptists, which are too 
common in these countries, and so persisting, were excommu- 

* Strype's Annals, III. ii. 102—106. 



198 sikuCtGles and thifmphs 

nicated by the rest."* And it will be remembered, that 
a few years earlier, the congregation formed by Mr. Browne 
at Middleburg, lost many of its members from the sanie 
cause. 

From a very singular book, written by one John Payne, 
at Harlaem, in 1597, it appears that there were considerable 
numbers of baptized believers in this country. He makes 
especial mention of a prisoner in Norwich gaol, Maydstone by 
name, incarcerated and threatened with death for professing 
baptist sentiments. He addresses his loving brethren, the 
merchants who frequent the Royal Exchange, to quicken 
them with a godly emulation, ere the axe be laid to the root 
of the tree. He is most anxious, however, to give the various 
classes of his fellow-countrymen warning to avoid *'new 
English anabaptists." "I wish you beware of the dangerous 
opinions of such English anabaptists bred here, as whose 
parsons, in part with more store of their letters, doth creep 
and spread among you in city and country." Having heard 
of the proposed execution of Maydstone, he urges his wish 
that the prisoner should not be put to death, but banished : 
"by reason, our noble prince, judges, nor state, should not 
be so reputed of, with such hard terms, by anabaptists and 
others, as I am loath here to express ; and (I am) already 
grieved to hear, what I hear, by occasion of report, that one 
of this English company is shortly like to die, being prisoner 
at Norwich." He then appeals to the "prisoner at Nor- 
wich ;" hopes some loving brother will signify to him, that 
'' his suddenly stepping from his spiritual mother to a new 
stepdame, rejecting the sweet food of the one, and hcking up 
the poison of the other, that therefore his suffering is as com- 
fortless as it is rash and perilous." The usual topics of re- 
proach are then introduced, and, as was likewise usual, the 

* An Inquirie and Answer of Thomas White, &c. p. 63, ed. 1606. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 199 

sufferer's opinions misstated, distorted, and defamed.* It is 
unnecessary to quote, since the reader is by this time familiar 
with them, and can estimate the little confidence to be placed 
in the accusations of a prejudiced opponent. 

We here close our notes from the fragmentary history of a 
people, who, among the mighty movements of the sixteenth 
century, held a subordinate, but by no means unimportant 
place. The history of their embodiment into churches, hav- 
ing historical records of their own and an abiding-place in 
this land, belongs rather to the notices which will accompany 
the earliest remaining writings of their pastors, Mr. John 
Smyth and Mr. Thomas Helwys. 

It has been seen that their idea, the true archetypal idea, 
of the church, was" the grand cause of the separation of the 
baptists, as individuals and communities, from all the various 
forms of ecclesiastical arrangement adopted by the reformers 
and their successors. There could be no harmony between 
the parties ; they were antagonistic from the first. Hence 
the baptists cannot be regarded as owing their origin to a 
secession from the protestant churches ; they occupied an 
independent and original position, one which unquestionably 
involved sufferings and loss from its unworldliness, and mani- 
fest contrariety to the political tendencies and alliances of the 
reform movement. Let it be granted as a truth of divine 
origin and power, that a visible church of Christ ought to 
comprise none but such as are believers in his doctrine, under 
the influence of his Spirit, and subject to him as Head over 
all things to his church ; then it follows, that the mixed as- 
semblages of a national church, under the headship of worldly 
princes, cannot be the true churches of Christ ; and also, that 
the exercise of secular po\fer by the magistrate, either as the 

* Royall Exchange : To suche worshipfuU Citezins, Marchants, Gen- 
tlemen, and other occupiers of the contrey as resorte thervnto. — At 
Harlem, printed with Gyles Romaen, pp. 21, 23, 45. 4to. 1597. 



200 STRrOGLRS AND TRIUMPHS 

imposer or executor of the church's law, is an invasion of the 
rights of the flock of Jesus, a breach of the statutes of the 
only Lawgiver, and a denial of his all-sufficient authority. 
Then also, the conscience must be free to follow the instruc- 
tions of the Heavenly Monitor, and none, not even idolaters, 
blasphemers, nor papists, be driven to the sacred temple by 
threats or violence, since faith is the gift of God, not pro- 
ducible by human powder ; nay, less likely to be produced, 
when physical force is resorted to. Then too, lastly, the 
unconscious babe must be denied admittance to the church, 
since both reason and scripture refuse to recognize the unin- 
telligent infant as possessed of that faith, which can only 
follow hearing the word of God, being also unable to declare 
a hearty, free, and willing acceptance of the salvation it 
proclaims. 

It would be an interesting inquiry, did time and occasion 
permit, how far this instinct of liberty influenced the doctri- 
nal peculiarities of the baptists, and led to the maintenance 
of a dogma, so often the theme of reproach against them, the 
freedom of the will against the absolute predestination of the 
reformed. Liberty of conscience, and the free action of the 
will, are evidently nearly allied ; and perhaps influenced, by 
some of those intangible and mental sympathies which often 
affect opinion, or by the antagonist position in which they 
found themselves on the other points to those who persecuted 
them, they were probably led to adopt a mode of stating this 
"vexed question" somewhat distant from the true mean. 

We have, however, discovered, the real cause of the unani- 
mous hostility these despised people encountered. Papist 
and protestant, puritan and Brownist, with one consent, laid 
aside their diff'erences, to condemn and punish a sect, a 
heresy, an opinion, which threw prostrate their favorite 
church, their politico-ecclesiastical power, their extravagant 
assumptions, and their unscriptural theories. The papist 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 201 

abhorred them : for, if this heresy prevailed, a church hoary 
•with age, laden with the spoils of many lands, rich in the 
merchandise of souls, must be utterly broken and destroyed. 
The protestants hated them : for their cherished headship, 
their worldly alliances, the pomps and circumstances of a 
state religion, must be debased before the kingly crown of 
Jesus. The puritans defamed them : for baptist sentiments 
were too liberal and free for those who sought a papal 
authority over conscience, and desired the sword of the higher 
powers to enforce their "holy discipline" on an unconverted 
people. The Brownist avoided them : for their principle of 
liberty was too broad, and to this they added the crime of 
rejecting the " Lord's little ones" from the fold. 

Thus the baptists became the first and only propounders 
of "absolute liberty, just and true liberty, equal and im- 
partial liberty."* For this they suffered and died. They 
proclaimed it by their deeds, they propagated it in their 
writings. In almost every country of Europe, amid tempests 
of wrath, stirred up by their faith, and their manly adher- 
ence to the truth, they were the indefatigable, consistent 
primal apostles of liberty in this latter age. We honor them. 
We reverence them. And humble though they be, we wel- 
come the republication of the first English writings which 
sounded the note of freedom for conscience as man's birth- 
right, in this land of the free ; they are sanctified by holy 
tears and the martyr's blood. f 

* Locke on Toleration, p. 31, 4to, ed, 

\ See Tracts on Liberty of Conscience, published by the Hanserd 
Knollys Society. 8vo. 1846. 

9* 



202 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 



SECTION X, 

THE IITDEPEN"DE]^TS. 

A BRIEF notice will suffice to dispose of a recent effort to 
deprive the baptists of the honor which is their due, and to 
claim for others the commendations which is their historic 
right. "We shall not hesitate," says Mr. Hanbury, "to 
attribute to Jacob's pen, what constitutes the boast and glory 
of our denomination as independents, the very first compo- 
sition ever addressed to authority, restricted to the particu- 
larly interesting object expressed in its title in these terms : 
— ' An humble supplication for toleration and Liberty to 
enjoy and observe the ordinances of Jesus Christ, in the 
administration of his churches, in lieu of human consti- 
tutions.' "* 

The "restricted" claim made in this supplication would 
not have required our attention, had the historian of the in- 
dependents been content therewith ; but as in the face of 
every accessible historical fact he has questioned the "equity 
of the claim" asserted, among others, by Dr. Price, in his 
History of ]S'onconformily,-|- that the baptists " must be re- 
garded as the first expounders, and most enlightened advo- 
cates of the best inheritance of man" — liberty of conscience; 
it becomes necessary to vindicate their equitable right and 
pre-eminence. 

* Memorials relating to the Independents, i. 225. f Vol, i. 522. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 203 

We propose, therefore, to establish the three following 
points: — 1. That the petition in question did not emanate 
from the independents. 2. That its contents do not entitle 
it to the honorable position assigned it. 3. That the inde- 
pendents, to a much later period, were not the advocates of 
an absolute, true, and impartial liberty. 

1. From whom did the petition for toleration emanate? 
On the accession of James L to the crown of this country, 
the Puritans made, as is well known, several attempts to 
obtain a new settlement of ecclesiastical affairs. The ill suc- 
cess of the Hampton Court conference forever crushed their 
hopes of further reformation, and was followed by the imme- 
diate deprivation of some hundreds of godly men. Among 
these was Mr. Henry Jacob. He became the most active of 
those ministers, who were designated by Mr. Bradshawe, 
another of them, *' the rigidest sort of them that are called 
Puritans."^' 

But that Mr. Jacob was not the author of the petition, is 
evident from his own words. For thus he speaks of its 
author : " That faithful man of God, whosoever he was, that 
made that petition to the king's majesty for a toleration of 
our way and profession, with peace and quietness in Eng- 
land. "f Still, in its prayer and statements he heartily con- 
curred, and frequently referred to it with approbation. The 
petition is signed by " Your majesty's most loyal, faithful, 
and obedient subjects, some of the late silenced and deprived 
ministers.''^ If then Mr. Jacob was one of the subscribers, 
which he probably was, he and the petitioners were Puritans, 
and not Brownists nor independents. 

In perfect accordance with this fact, which appears on the 

* English Puritanism, containing the main opinions of, <fec., printed 
1605. 

f An Attestation, <fec., p. 137. 1613. 

X P. 48, edit. 1609. See also Hanbury, i. 227. 



204 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

face of the petition, the authorship is ascribed to the Puritans 
by the writer of the Supplication to king James in 1620.* 
We find, moreover, at the period when Mr. Jaocb was at 
Leyden, in Holland, that although he enjoyed the friendship 
of Mr. Robinson, who is with justice regarded as the parent 
of modern independency, yet, as an elder, he governed a 
separatist church, " which began before Mr. Robinson, and 
continued after him," and which, without doubt, was a pres- 
byterian church.f Certain it is, that in 1613, four years after 
the date of the petition in question, Mr. Jacob held to a pres- 
byterian and synodal association of churches, " differing," he 
says, " not one hair from Calvin and- Beza, touching the 
substance of this matter.":j: And when forming his congre- 
gation in London, in 1616, he consulted not with the separa- 
tists, nor with the Brownists, nor with the Independents, but 
with certain deprived and learned puritans, who expressed 
their approbation of his design. § 

Other circumstances seem to lead to the conclusion, that 
the church established by Jacob was not an independent 
church. From a letter, dated April 5, 1624, about the time 
of Jacob's departure for Virginia, addressed by Mr. Robinson 
to some other church in London, we learn that it was ques- 
tioned whether Jacob's church was a true church, and to 
be recognized as such. Mr. Robinson replies in the affirma- 
tive, but somewhat doubtingly; which hesitation could not 
have existed had it been in communion, or governed on the 
same principles, with his own church. || 

* "The Puritans in their supplication, printed anno 1609. Much 

they write for toleration," Tracts on Liberty of Conscience, pp. 222, 
223. 

f Cotton's Way of Congregational Churches, p. 14, edit. 1648. Ste- 
ven's Hist, of Scot. Ch. at Rotterdam, p. 310. 

X An Attestation, (fee. pp. 13, 97. § N"eal. i. 462, 

II Treatise on the Lawfulness of hearing ministers of the Church of 
England, Printed 1634 ; at the end. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 205 

It is to be further observed, that when, in 1633, Mr. 
Spilsbury seceded from Jacob's church, it being then under 
the pastoral care of Mr. Lathorpe, it was ranked as an inde- 
pendent church, as it continued to be for some time after, 
until, during the pastorate of Mr. Henry Jessey, it became 
a baptist community. Now we are informed by Mr. Kiffin, 
that Mr. Spilsbury 's secession was owing not merely to a 
change of views on the subject of baptism, but "that the 
congregation kept not to their first principles of separation." 
Thus, before it became an independent church, it held certain 
"principles of separation," which could have been none other 
than those of the more rigid puritans, to whom Mr. Jacob, 
about 1609, belonged.* 

It is, however, clear, that the petition for toleration is a 
puritan production, and that if Mr. Jacob united in its prayer, 
as he certainly concurred in its sentiments, it was not as 
an independent, but as a puritan. Whatever cause there 
may be for glorying in this matter, the " glory" and the 
" boast" must evidently belong to that party. 

2. But do the contents of the petition bear out the pre- 
eminence assigned to it ? It is admitted by Mr. Hanbury, 
" that Mr. Jacob did not on his side dissert upon, or argue 
for religious liberty, in the entire breadth of it."f Where, 
then, is the basis of Mr. Hanbury 's claim, since the baptists 
DID "dissert upon, and argue for religious liberty" in its 
fullest extent, as the " Tracts on Liberty of Conscience" 
clearly show. Can a prayer for a restricted toleration be set 
by the side of a demand for entire liberty of conscience, as 
of equal worth ? Yet such was the toleration in question ; 
for thus it prays : — " First, the liberty of enjoying and prac- 
tising the holy ordinances enacted and left by the Lord, for 
the perpetual direction and guiding of his churches. Sec- 

* Wilson, i. 41. Crosby, i. 148. f Hanbury, i. 225, note. 



206 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

ondly, an entire exemption from the jurisdiction of the said 
prelates and their officers. And lastly, the happiness to live 
under the command and charge of any of your subordinate 
civil magistrates, and so to be for our actions and carriage in 
the ministry accountable unto them."* 

Again : " We acknowledge no other power and authority 
for the overseeing, ruling, and censuring of particular 
churches, how many soever in number, in the case of their 
misgovernment, than that which is originally invested in your 
royal person, and from it derived to such of your laity as 
you shall judge worthy to be deputed to the execution of 
the same under you. So as the favor humbly solicited by 
us is, that whereas our Lord Jesus hath given to each par- 
ticular church this right and privilege, viz., to elect, ordain, 
and deprive her own ministers, and to exercise all other parts 
of lawful ecclesiastical jurisdiction under him, your majesty 
would be pleased to take order, as well that each particular 
church that shall be allowed to partake in the benefit of the 
said toleration, may have, enjoy, and put in execution and 
practise, this her said right and privilege, as that some your 
subaltern civil officers may be appointed by you to demand 
and receive of each church a due and just account of their 
proceedings."! 

Having thus provided for secular interference with the 
church's affairs, the petitioners proceed to limit to themselves 
the toleration desired. ** We do humbly beseech your maj- 
esty not to think, that by our suit for the said toleration, we 
make an overture and way for toleration unto papists, our 
suit being of a different nature from theirs, and the induce- 
ments thereof such, as cannot conclude aught in favor of 
them, whose head is antichrist, whose worship is idolatry, 
whose doctrine is heresy, and a profession directly con- 

* An Humble Supplication, &c., p. 8. Hanbury, i, 225, 
f Ibid. pp. 13, 14. Hanbury, i. 226. 



OF KEUGIOrS LIBERTY. 20? 

trary to the lawful state and government of free countries 
and kingdoms."* 

For such a " restricted" toleration the papists had peti- 
tioned the sovereign at an earlier period. The language of 
the puritans is but the counterpart of the following, which 
issued five years before from these excepted religionists. 

" We think," say the catholics, " that the permission of the 
liberty we entreat, is, neither in reason of state, a thing 
hurtful, nor by the doctrine of protestants unlawful.- — But 
the puritan, as he increaseth daily above the protestant in 
number, so is he of a more presuming, imperious, and hotter 
disposition and zeal, ever strongly burning in desire to re- 
duce all things to the form of his own idea, or imagination 
conceived, and therefore, by discourse or reason, not unlike 
to attempt the overthrow of the protestant, and bring the 
kingdom, especially the ecclesiastical state, to a parity, or 
popular government, if the catholic were once extinguished; 
and to extinguish him no mean more potent, than to forbid 
and punish the exercise of his religion. "f A singular and 
pre-eminent toleration truly, which would involve an ex- 
terminating and internecine war between papist and puritan ! 

Mr. Jacob has, however, left us no room to doubt the 
nature of the toleration, he and his brother puritans so 
earnestly pressed. Thus, in 1606, he writes it down as a 
proposition they were willing to maintain, against the pre- 
lates ; that " civil mao-jstrates ougfht to be the overseers of 
provinces and dioceses, and of the several churches therein. 
And it is their office, and duty, enjoined them by God, to 
take knowledge of, to punish and redress, all misgoverning or 
ill -teaching of any church, or church officer." J Again, in the 

* Ibid. p. 20. PlanLuiy, ibid. 

f A Supplication to the King, &c. pp. 4, 9. 4to. 1604. 
X A Christian and Modest Offer of a Conference, (fee. pp. 2, 3. 4to. 
1606. 



208 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

year 1613, when he is supposed by Mr. Hanbury to have 
joined the Independents, he writes, " Though we affirm that 
the church government is independent, and immediately 
derived from Christ, yet we affirm also, that the civil magis- 
trate is even therein supreme governor civilly. And though 
nothing may be imposed on the Christian people of a con- 
gregation, against their wills, by any spiritual authority — for 
so only we intend — yet we affirm withal, that the civil magis- 
trate may impose on them spiritual matters, by civil power ; 
yea, whether they like or dislike, if he see it good. This we 
all gladly acknowledge." And he refers to the petition in 
question for proof. "^ 

Elsewhere Mr. Jacob says, " We grant that civil magistrates 
may, and sometimes ought, to impose good things on a true 
church, against their wills, if they stiffl}'- err, as sometimes 
they may."j" And in his latest production, when engaged, in 
the year 1616, in forming his church in London, he makes 
use of the following language, in the Confession of Faith he 
then put forth to clear the ** said Christians from the slander 
of schism, and undutifulness to the magistrate." "We believe 
that we, and all true visible churches, ought to be overseen, 
and kept in good and peace, and ought to be governed, 
(under Christ) both supremely and also subordinately by 
the civil magistrate ; yea, in causes of religion when need 
is. By which rightful power of his, he ought to cherish 
and prefer the godly and religious, and to punish as truth 
and right shall require, the untractable and unreasonable. 
Howbeit, yet always but civilly. And- therefore we from 
our heart, most humbly do desire that our gracious sov- 
ereign king would himself as far as he seeth good, and 
further by some substituted civil magistrate under him, in 

* An Attestation of many learned, &c., pp. 115 — 117. 
f An Attestation, Ac, p. 316, edit. 1618. 



OF RELIGIOTTS LIBERTY. 209 

clemency take this special oversight and government of us, 
to whose ordering and protection we most humbly commit 
ourselves."* To this confession is added another supplica- 
tion for toleration, which he humbly prays his majesty to ap- 
point some civil magistrate, ** qualified with wisdom, learning, 
and virtue, to be overseer for their more peaceable, orderly, 
and dutiful carriage, both in our worshipping God, and in all 
other our affairs, "f 

The admission then of Mr. Hanbury, so fatal to his claim, 
that Mr. Jacob did not " dissert upon, nor argue for religious 
liberty, in the entire breadth of it," is established by unde- 
niable evidence ; and we are now entitled to ask. Is the clear, 
explicit, and broad statement of the doctrine of religious 
liberty, in the treatises published in the years 1614 and 1615 
by the baptists, to be regarded as of less value than the 
meagre and individual desire of toleration which this petition, 
and these extracts from the writings of its supposed author, 
exhibit ? A toleration founded on the narrowest basis ; to 
be enjoyed only by the body that sought it ; and, at the same 
time, allowing, nay, asking for a compulsory and forced inter- 
ference with its religious rights and duties, and those of others 
also ? Can this be " the glory and boast" of the *' inde- 
pendent denomination," for which Mr. Hanbury thinks it so 
" commendable to strive for the pre-eminence ?" The baptists 
may relinquish such a glory ; while they hold in equity, that 

* Anno Domini, 1616. A Confession and Protestation, &c. not paged. 
Hanbury, i. 301. 

f A Confession, (fee. Hanbury, i. 306. The petition of 1609 is also 
referred to approvingly in this Supplication, and in other places of the 
Confession. Jacob's words are, " Beseeching you, as in effect they for- 
merly did, so now again, to give unto them this favor, that peaceably 
and quietly they may worship God," <fec. And in the margin reference 
is made thus: — "Anno 1609. An Humble Supplication." Jacob thus 
again, in 1616, identifies himself with the puritans. 



210 STRUGGLES AND TKITJMPIIS 

perfect liberty of conscience, to be enjoyed by all men, ex- 
celletb in glory ; and for this they strive. 

3. But lastly, we have to show, that the independents to 
a yet later period were not the advocates of an absolute, full, 
and impartial liberty. If Mr. Jacob was a puritan, then are 
they deprived of the honor in question ; or if an independent, 
the evidence fails to substantiate the claim. It now remains 
to examine one other witness, of whose relation to that body 
there can be no doubt, and whose name would be an honor 
and a praise to any community who could call him theirs. 
Mr. John Robinson had been a puritan. He separated on 
holy principles from a church, which he thought to be anti- 
christian, and in exile nobly endured and labored for the 
cause of God. He was the spiritual parent of many, who, 
in future years, were to be called the pilgrim fathers ; whose 
deeds form the earlier annals of a mighty people. But 
while on many points he arrived at juster and truer views 
than the puritans : on their doctrine of coercion in matters 
of religion he made little or no advance. In the year 1610, 
in the earliest of his productions, he thus explicitly asserts 
its propriety — "That godly magistrates are by compulsion 
to repress public and notable idolatry, as also to provide that 
the truth of God, in his ordinance, be taught and published 
in their dominions, I make no doubt ; it may be also, it is not 
unlawful for them by some penalty or other, to provoke their 
subjects universally unto hearing for their instruction and con- 
version ; yea, to grant they may inflict the same upon them, 
if, after due teaching, they offer not themselves unto the 
church." And again, he says, "That religious actions may 
be punished civilly by the magistrate, which is the preserver 
of both tables, and so to punish all breaches of both, espe- 
cially such as draw with them the violation of the positive 
laws of kingdoms, or disturbances of common peace."* 

* Justification of Separation, pp. 242, 243, 153, edit, 1639. 



OF HKLTGTOUS LIBERTY, 211 

It was in tJie year succeeding this publication of Mr. Robin- 
son, 1611, that the baptists issued a "Confession of Faith, 
with certain conclusions," in which they assert, ''that the 
magistrate is not to meddle with religion, or matters of con- 
science, nor compel men to this or that form of religion, 
because Christ is the King and Lawgiver of the church and 
conscience." This assertion was questioned by Robinson, and 
in 1614 he published a work in which it was denied. The 
baptists were not slow to answer, and in the next year replied 
to his objections, endeavoring to prove, " that no man ought 
to be persecuted for his religion." For this piece, and the 
sentiments of Mr. Robinson, we must refer to the volume 
lately published.* 

These views of Mr. Robinson were not accidental, they con- 
stituted a part of his religious behef. Hence in nearly all 
his works, from the first in 1610 to the last in 1625, we find 
the same sentiments maintained. 

In his Observations, Divine and Moral, he says, " Men 
are for the most part minded for or against Toleration of 
Diversity of Religions, according to the conformity which they 
themselves hold, or hold not, with the country or kingdom 
where they hve. Protestants, living in the country of papists, 
commonly plead for toleration of religion ; so do papists that 
live where protestants bear sway ; though few of either, 
especially the clergy, as they are called, would have the other 
tolerated where the world goes on their side." He then re- 
marks on the sentiments of the fathers on this point, and says 
that the saying of " the wise king of Poland seemeth approv- 
able, that it is ' one of three things which God hath kept in 
his own hands, to urge the conscience this way,' and to cause 
a man to profess a rehgion by working it first in his heart. "f 



* Tracts on Liberty of Conscience, pp. 85 — 180. 
f See Tracts, &c. p. 216. 



212 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

He next reviews two or three objections, and comes "Lastly, 
to that of the father, * that many who at first serve God by 
compulsion, come after to serve him freely and willingly.' I 
answer," he says, " that neither good intents, nor events, 
which are casual, can justify unreasonable violence ; and, 
withal, that by this course of compulsion many become athe- 
ists, hypocrites, and familists, and being at first constrained to 
practise against conscience, lose all conscience afterwards. 
.... Yet, do I not deny all compulsion to the hearing of 
God's word, as the means to work religion, and common to 
all of all sorts, good and bad ; much less excuse civil disobe- 
dience, palliated with religious shows and pretences ; or con- 
demn convenient restraint of public idolatry ; so as this rule 
of reason holds its place, viz., that ' the bond between magis- 
trate and subject is essentially civil,' but religious accidentally 
only, though eminently."* 

Our last quotation shall be taken from his most important 
work ; — a work issued as a formal, and therefore carefully 
digested statement of his belief on all points of faith and 
godliness. It is ** A just and necessary Apology of certain 
Christians, no less contumeliously than commonly called 
Brownists or Barrowists." It was first pubhshed in Latin, 
in 1619, and afterwards translated by himself, and printed in 
1625. The latter edition is before us. In the chapter on 
civil magistracy he thus writes — " We believe the very same, 
touching the civil magistrate, with the Belgic reformed 
churches, and willingly subscribe to their confession ; and the 
more, because what is by many restrained to the Christian 
magistrate, they extend indefinitely and absolutely to the 
magistrate whomsoever." In commenting on this enlarged 
duty of the magistrate, and which we will presently produce, 

* Observations Divine and Moral, Ac, pp. 49 — 51, edit. 1625. Han- 
bury, i. 436. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 213 

he says, " The magistrate, though a heathen, hath power, as 
the minister of God for the good of his subjects, to command 
and procure in and by good and lawful manner and means, 
whatsoever appertains either to their natural or spiritual life, 
so the same be not contrary to God's word : upon which word 
of God, if it beat, God forbid, that the Christian magistrate 
should take liberty to use, or rather abuse his authority for 
the same."* That is to say, the magistrate, whether Chris- 
tian or heathen, has a natural and unchangeable right neither 
diminished nor increased by his profession of Christianity, to 
command the truth, that is of course such truth as Mr. Rob- 
inson may approve, but no other. And inasmuch as many 
persons may not be able to receive that truth, then must 
they abide the infliction of some undefined penalty for their 
unbelief. 

We now turn to the Belgic confession for the full and 
authentic expression of Mr. Robinson's creed upon this point. 
The reader will be then fully prepared to appreciate the 
*' equity of the claim" made by the advocate of the indepen- 
dents. After confessing the divine institution of magistrates, 
to punish the wicked and defend the good, it thus proceeds — 
" Moreover it is their duty, not only to be careful to preserve 
the civil government, but also to endeavor that the ministry 
may be preserved, that all idolatry and counterfeit worship of 
God, may be clean abolished, that the kingdom of antichrist 
may be overthrown, and that the kingdom of Christ may be 
enlarged. To conclude, it is their duty to bring to pass, that 
the holy word of the gospel may be preached everywhere, 
that all men may serve and worship God purely and freely, 
according to the prescript rule of his word." And they 
finish with the following damnatory clause : — " Wherefore 
we condemn the anabaptists, and all those troublesome spirits, 

* Ch. xi. pp. 56, 57. Hanbury, i. 384. The last part of this passage 
is omitted by Mr. Hanbury. 



214 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

wlio do reject higher powers and magistrates, overthrow all 
laws and judgments, make all goods common, and to con- 
clude, do abolish and confound all those orders and de- 
grees which God hath appointed among men for honesty's 
sake."=5^ 

It is then most conclusively shown, that the petition of 
1609 fails to sustain the assertion of Mr. Hanbury, being pu- 
ritan in its origin, and unworthy of the commendation be- 
stowed upon it ; and that the independents, as such, in the 
person of their founder, did not understand, up to the period 
of his death in 1626, the rights of conscience. 

We may here close our defence of the claim of '* priority 
boasted of by some modern baptists ;" a claim, however, 
advanced and established, not in the spirit of boasting, but 
on the ground of truth and historic fact. Our forefathers 
asserted the inalienable right of all men, Jew and Gentile, 
papist and puritan, infidel and believer, to serve God, to obey 
the statutes of the Lord Jesus in his sanctuary, and to act as 
each one's conscience might dictate ; they desired not to be 
tolerated, but to be free. Evidence can be adduced that the 
Independents reached not this high ground of truth and 
liberty until a much later period ; and that even in the times 
of the Commonwealth, while many were favorable to a 
toleration, they refused to allow an unrestricted liberty in 
matters of faith. Enough is, however, presented to show the 
fallacy of the claim made by Mr. Hanbury, and the injustice 
of withholding from the authors of the tracts above-men- 
tioned, the pre-eminent honor of having issued ** the very 
first composition ever addressed to authority," not re- 
stricted to toleration, but demanding an absolute, full, and 
impartial liberty. 

The baptists stood alone, amidst all their contemporaries, 

* An Harmony of the Confessions, Ac, p. 588, edit. 1586. Hall' 
Harmony of the Confessions, p. 483, edit. 1842. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 215 

for liberal and enlightened views. Calumny, contumely, re- 
proach, and persecution, failed to turn thein from their high 
and holy calling. Freedom to worship God, as each for him- 
self thought right, even when others might think it heresy, 
they nobly struggled for to the end. They were the first to 
pioneer the wa}^ through the forests of human superstitions, 
the morasses of human inventions, and the barriers of human 
usurpations. A forlorn hope, they assailed the huge forti-ess 
of human tyranny. But God loas their refuge and their 
strength. They made the costly outlay for that inheritance 
whose rich and pleasant fruit we daily gather. On their be- 
half, on our own behalf, that the stigma of ingratitude may 
not attach to us, nor those worthy ones be deprived of their 
honorable and blood-bought renown, we most emphatically, 
re-assert their claim, and adopt, with an assured confidence in 
its truth, the admirable language of Dr. Price — " It belonged 
to the members of a calumniated and despised sect, few in 
number and poor in circumstances, to bring forth to public 
view, in their simplicity and omnipotence, those immortal 
principles which are now universally recognized as of divine 
authority and universal obligation. Other writers of more 
distinguished name succeeded, and robbed them of their 
honor; but their title is so good, and the amount of service 
they performed on behalf of the common interests of hu- 
manity is so incalculable, that an impartial posterity must as- 
sign to them their due meed of praise."* 

* History of Nonconformity, i. 522, 523. 



216 STRUGGLES AND TRIUIVIPHS 



SECTION XL 

THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND. 
[From the " Biographical Introduction" to the Bloody Tenent.*] 

It was on the 1st day of December, in the year 1630, that 
Mr. Roger WiUiams, with his wife, embarked at Bristol for 
America, in the ship Lyon, Captain William Pierce. 

Two years and a half before, a number of eminent and 
enthusiastic men had gone forth, animated by religious prin- 
ciples and purposes, to seek a home and a refuge from perse- 
cution, on the wild and untenanted shores of Massachusetts 
Bay. Charles I. had announced his design of ruhng the 
English people by arbitrary power, only a few days before a 
patent for the Company of Massachusetts Bay passed the 
seals. f No provision was made in this document for the 
exercise of religious Uberty. The emigrants were puritans, 
and although they had suffered long for conscience' sake, on 
this subject their views were as contracted as those of their 
brethren who in Elizabeth's reign sought the overthrow of 
England's hierarchy.| The patent secured to them, however, ' 
to a great extent, a legislative independence of the mother 
country ; but they soon employed that power to persecute 
differing consciences. 

The emigrants landed at Salera at the end of June, 1629. 

* Hanserd Knollys Society's Edition. 

f Bancroft's Hist, of U. S. i. 342. Knowles' Life of R. Williams, p. 31. 

X See Broadniead Records, In trod. p. xxii. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 217 

A few mud hovels alone marked the place of their future 
abode. On then- passage they arranged the order of their 
government, and bound themselves by solemn covenant to 
each other and the Lord. As rehgion was the cause of their 
abandonment of their native land, so was its establishment 
their first care. At their request a few of the settlers at 
Plymouth, where in 1620 a colony had been established by 
the members of Mr. John Robinson's church, came over to 
assist and advise on the arrangement of their church polity. 
After several conferences, the order determined on was the 
congregational, and measures were immediately taken for the 
choice of elders and deacons. A day of fasting and prayer 
was appointed, and thirty persons covenanted together to walk 
in the ways of God. Mr. Skelton was chosen pastor, Mr. 
Higginson teacher, both puritan clergymen of celebrity, and 
Mr. Houghton ruling elder. They agi-eed with the church at 
Plymouth, *'That the children of the faithful are church 
members with their parents, and that their baptism is a seal 
of their being so."* 

The church was thus self-constituted. It owned no alle- 
giance to bishop, priest, or king. It recognized but one 
authority — the King of saints : but one rule — the word of 
God. The new system did not, however, meet with the 
approbation of all this little company. Some still fondly 
clung to the episcopacy of their native land, and to the more 
imposing rites of their mother church. The main body of 
the emigrants did not altogether refuse to have communion 
with the church which had so unnaturally driven them away ; 
but, as they said, they separated from her corruptions, 
and rejected the human inventions in worship which they 
discovered in her fold. Not so all. Liberty of worship they 
desired indeed, but not a new form of polity. Two brothers, 

* IS'eal's Hi?t. of N. England, i. 141, 144. Baillie's Dissuasive, p. 66. 
Mather's Magnaha, i. 19. 

10 



218 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

John and Samuel Browne, the one a lawyer, the other a 
merchant, were the leaders of this little band. They wished 
the continuance of the Common Prayer, of the ceremonies 
usually observed in the administration of baptism and the 
Lord's Supper, and a wider door for the entrance of mem- 
bers into a church state. Dissatisfied with the new order of 
things, they set up a separate assembly. This was a mutiny 
against the state, as well as against the church ; and proving 
incorrigible, the brothers were sent home in "the Lyon's 
Whelp."* 

In the year 1630, a large addition was made to the pilgrim 
band, on the arrival of Governor Winthrop. Not less than 
1500 persons accompanied him, to escape the bigotry and 
persecuting spirit of Laud. Several new settlements were 
formed, and the seat of the colonial government was fixed at 
Boston. Though sincere in their attachment to true religion, 
and desirous of practising its duties unmolested by episcopal 
tyranny, they thought not of toleration for others. No such 
idea had dawned upon them. They were prepared to prac- 
tise over other consciences the like tyranny to that from which 
they had fled. 

With nobler views than these did Mr. Williams disembark 
at Boston, after a very tempestuous voyage, on the 5th of 
February, in the year 1631. The infant colony had suffered 
very much during the winter from the severity of the weather, 
and the scarcity of provisions. The arrival of the Lyon was 
welcomed with gratitude, as the friendly interposition of the 
hand of God.f 

Roger Williams was at this time little more than thirty 
years of age — "a young minister, godly and zealous, having 
precious gifts.":}: Tradition tells us, that he was born in 

* Neal, i. 144. Bancroft, i. 850. Cotton Mather's Magnalia, book L 
p. 19. Backus' Hist, of Baptists in New England, i, 45. 
f Knowles, p. 37. t Bancroft, i. 367. 



OF RELIGIOtTS LIBERTY. 219 

Wales : that he was in some way related to Cromwell : that 
his parents were in humble life : and that he owed his educa- 
tion to Sir Edward Coke, who, accidentally observing his at- 
tention at public worship, and ascertaining the accuracy of 
the notes he took of the sermon, sent him to the University 
of Oxford. All this may or may not be true ; but it is evi- 
dent that his education was liberal, and that he had a good 
acquaintance with the classics and the original languages of the 
scriptures. 

He himself informs us, that in his early years his heart was 
imbued with spiritual life. "From my childhood, the Father 
of lights and mercies touched my soul with a love to himself, 
to his only begotten, the true Lord Jesus, to his holy scrip- 
tures."* At this time he must have been about twelve years 
old. His first studies were directed to the law, probably at 
the suggestion of his patron. He became early attached to 
those democratic principles which are so ably stated in the 
"Bloudy Tenent," and to those rights of liberty which 
found so able a defender in the aged Coke. Subsequently, 
however, he turned his attention to theology, and assumed 
the charge of a parish. It was during this period that he 
became acquainted with the leading emigrants to America; 
and he appears to have been the most decided amongst them 
in their opposition to the liturgy, ceremonies, and hierarchy 
of the English church. f It is probable that it was upon the 
subject of the grievances they endured, he had the interview 

* Knowles, p. 23, 391. Backus, i. 508. 

f " Master Cotton may caU to mind that the discusser [Williams] , riding 
with himself and one other of precious memory, Master Hooker, to and 
from Sempringham, presented his arguments from scripture, why he 
durst not join with them in their use of Common Prayer." Bloody 
Tenent more Bloody, p. 12. See also Bloody Tenent [wherever refer- 
ence is made to this work in these pages, it is to the edition of the Han- 
serd KnoUys Society], pp. 43 and 3*74. Baillie's Dissuasive, p. 65. 



220 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

with King James of which he speaks in a letter written late 
in life.* 

It was a notable year, both in Old and in New England, 
in which Williams sought a refuge for conscience amid the 
wilds of America. Autocratic rule was decided upon by the 
infatuated Charles, and the utterance of the most arbitrary 
principles from the pulpits of the court clergy was encour- 
aged. Doctrines subversive of popular rights were taught, 
and the sermons containing them published at the king's 
special command. Laud assumed a similar authority in 
ecclesiastical affairs. With unscrupulous zeal and severity 
he sought to extirpate puritanism from the church. The 
Calvinistic interpretation of the articles was condemned, and 
Bishop Davenant was rebuked for a sermon which he preached 
upon the lYth. The puritans were to a man Calvinists, the 
Laudean party were Arminians. And as if to give the 
former practical proof of the lengths to which Laud was 
prepared to go, and to shut them up either to silence or to 
voluntary banishment, Leighton, for his "Plea against Pre- 
lacy," was this year committed to prison for life, iSned 
£10,000, degraded from his ministry, whipped, pilloried, his 
ears cut off, his nose slit, and his face branded with a hot 
iron. From this tyranny over thought and conscience Wil- 
hams fled, only to bear his testimony against similar outrages 
upon conscience and human rights in the New World — to find 
the same principles in active operation among the very men 
who hke him had suffered, and who like him sought relief on 
that distant shore. 

No sooner had Mr. Williams landed at Boston, than we 
find him declaring his opinion, that "the magistrate might 
not punish a breach of the sabbath, nor any other offence, as 

* In his letter to Major Mason, he refers to " King James, whom I 
have spoke with." Knowles, p. 31. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 221 

it was a breach of the first table."* Moreover, so impure 
did he deem the communion of the church of England, that 
he hesitated to hold communion with any church that con- 
tinued in any manner favorable to it. This was, however, 
the case with the church at Boston. It refused to regard 
the hierarchy and parishional assemblies of the English church 
as portions of the abominations of anti-christ. It permitted 
its members^ when in England, to commune with it, in hearing 
the word and in the private administration of the sacraments.f 
Thus while separating from its corruptions, the emigrants 
clave to it with a fond pertinacity. This was displeasing to 
the free soul of Williams. He refused to join the congrega- 
tion at Boston. It would have been a weak and sinful com- 
pliance with evil. He could not regard the cruelties and 
severities, and oppression, exercised by the church of Eng- 
land, with any feelings but those of indignation. That could 
not be the true church of Christ on whose skirts was found 
sprinkled the blood of saints and martyrs. He therefore 
gladly accepted the invitation of the church at Salem, and a 
few weeks after his arrival he left Boston to enter upon the 
pastorate there. 

But on the very same day on which he commenced his 
ministry at Salem (April 12), the General Court of the 
Colony expressed its disapprobation of the step, and required 
the church to forbear any further proceeding. This was an 
arbitrary and unjust interference with the rights of the Salem 
church. As a congregational and independent community, it 
had a perfect right to select Mr.Williams for its pastor. The 
choice of its ministry is one of the church's most sacred priv- 
ileges, to be exercised only in subordination to the laws and 
to the will of its great Head. This right the General Court 

* Such is Governor "Winthrop's tes?timony. Knowles, p. 46. 
f Weld's Answer to W. R. p. 10. 4to. 1644. 



222 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

most flagrantly violated, and thus laid the foundation for that 
course of resistance which eventually led to the banishment 
Qf Mr. Williams * 

To the civil government of the colony Mr. Williams was 
prepared to give all due submission. Very soon after his 
arrival, he entered his name upon the list of those who 
desired to be made freemen, and on the 12th of May took the 
customary oaths. Yet as if to bring into conflict at the 
earliest moment, and to excite the expression of those gener- 
ous sentiments on religious and civil liberty which animated 
the soul of Mr. Williams, on that very day the court " ordered 
and agreed, that for the time to come, no man shall be ad- 
mitted to the freedom of this body politic, but such as are 
members of some of the churches within the limits of the 
same." Thus a theocracy was established. The government 
belonged to the saints. They alone could rule in the com- 
monwealth, or be capable of the exercise of civil rights. 
" Not only was the door of calling to magistracy shut against 
natural and unregenerate men, though excellently fitted for 
civil offices, but also against the best and ablest servants of 
God, except they be entered into church estate."f This was 
to follow, according to Williams' idea, " Moses' church con- 
stitution," "to pluck up the roots and foundations of all 
common society in the world, to turn the garden and para- 
dise of the church and saints into the field of the civil state 

* Backus, i. 54, 57. 

f See Bloody Tenent, pp. 287, 247, 358. Knowles, pp. 45, 49. Backus, 
i. 49. Bancroft, i. 360, At Taunton, the minister, Mr. Streete, " publicly 
and earnestly persuaded his church members to give land to none but such 
as might be fit for church members : yea, not to receive such English 
into the town." Bloody Tenent more Bloody, p. 283. By a subsequent 
law no church could be constituted without the sanction of the magis- 
trates : and the members of any church formed without it, were de- 
prived of the franchise. Backus, i. 77. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 223 

of the world, and to reduce the world to the first chaos or 
confusion."* 

As peace could not be enjoyed at Salem, before the end of 
the summer Mr. Williams withdrew to Plymouth ; " where," 
says Governor Bradford, " he was freely entertained, accord- 
ing to our poor ability, and exercised his gifts among us ; 
and after some time was admitted a member of the church, 
and his teaching well appro ved."f Two years he labored 
in the ministry of the word among the pilgrim fathers ; but 
it would seem not without proclaiming those principles of 
freedom which had already made him an object of jealousy. 
For on requesting his dismissal thence to Salem, in the 
autumn of 1635, we find the elder, Mr. Brewster, persuading 
the church at Plymouth to relinquish communion with him, 
lest he should "run the same course of rigid separation and 
anabaptistry which Mr. John Smith, the se -baptist, at 
Amsterdam, had done."J It was during his residence at 
Plymouth that he acquired that knowledge of the Indian 
language, and that acquaintance with the chiefs of the Nar- 
ragansetts, which became so serviceable to him in his ban- 
ishment. 

His acceptance of their invitation afi'orded sincere and great 
pleasure to the church at Salem. His former ministry amongst 
them had resulted in a warm attachment, and not a few left 
Plymouth to place themselves under his spiritual care. Two 

* "Mr. Cotton effectually recommended, that none should be elected 
nor electors therein, except such as were visible subjects of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, personally confederated in our churches." Mather's Mag- 
nalia, b. iii. p. 21. 

f Backus, i. 54. Knowles, p. 50. 

X Kno-wles, p. 53. Mr. Cotton, in his Answer to Roger Williams, 
tells us that " elder Brewster warned the whole chm-ch of the danger of 
his spirit, which moved the better part of the church to be glad of his 
removal from them into the Bay." Cotton's Answer, p. 4. 



224 Sl'RUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

or three weeks only could have passed after his return, when, 
on the 3d of September, Mr. Cotton, his destined antagonist 
in the strife on Uberty of conscience, landed at Boston, in 
company with Mr. Hooker, and Mr. Stone ; which " glorious 
triumvirate coming together, made the poor people in the 
wilderness to say, That the God of heaven had supplied them 
with what would in some sort answer their three great neces- 
sities : Cotton for their clothing. Hooker for their fishing, and 
Sto7ie for their building."* 

John Cotton was the son of a puritan lawyer. Educated 
at Cambridge, he had acquired a large amount of learning ; 
and by his study of the schoolmen sharpened the natural 
acuteness and subtilty of his mind. In theology he was a 
thorough Calvinist, and adopted in all their extent the theo- 
cratic principles of the great Genevan reformer. On his ar- 
rival in New England, he was immediately called upon to 
advise and arrange the civil and ecclesiastical affairs of the 
colony. By his personal influence the churches were settled 
in a regular and permanent form, and their laws of discipline 
were finally determined by the platform adopted at Cam- 
bridge in 1648. The civil laws were adjusted to the pohty 
of the church, and while nominally distinct, they supported 
and assisted each other. f 

Matter for complaint was soon discovered against Mr. Wil- 
liams. At Plymouth he had already urged objections relative 

* Mather's Magnalia, iii. 20. Cotton's Way of Cong. Churches, pp. 
16, 80. 

f Knowles, pp. 42, 43. " It was requested of Mr. Cotton " says his de- 
scendant Cotton Mather, "that he would from the laws wherewith God 
governed his ancient people, form an abstract of such as were of a 
moral and lasting equity ; which he performed as acceptably as judi- 
ciously. ... He propounded unto them, an endeavor after a theocracy, 
as near as might be to that which was the glory of Israel, the peculiar 
people." Magnalia, iii. 20. Backus, i. 19. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTT. 225 

to tlie royal patent, under which the colonists held their 
lands. A manuscript treatise concerning it now became the 
subject of consideration by the General Court. In this work, 
Mr. Williams appears to have questioned the King's right to 
grant the possession of lands which did not belong to him, 
but to the natives who hunted over them. Equity required 
that they should be fairly purchased of the Indian possessors. 
Mr. Williams was "convented" before the Court. Subse- 
quently, he gave satisfaction to his judges of his ** intentions 
and loyalty," and the matter was passed by. It will be seen, 
however, that this accusation was revived, and declared to be 
one of the causes of his banishment.* 

For a few months, durinsr the sickness of Mr. Skelton, Mr. 
Williams continued his ministry without interruption, and 
with great acceptance. On the 2d of August, 1634, Mr. 
Skelton died, and the Salem church shortly thereafter chose 
him to be their settled teacher. To this the magistrates and 
ministers objected. His principles were obnoxious to them. 
They sent a request to the church, that they would not ordain 
him. But in the exercise of their undoubted right the church 
persisted, and Mr. Williams was regularly inducted to the 
office of teacher.! 

Occasion was soon found to punish the church and its re- 
fractory minister. On November the lYth, he was summoned 
to appear before the Court, for again teaching publicly 
"against the king's patent, and our great sin in claiming 
right thereby to this country : and for terming the churches 
of England antichristian." A new accusation was made on 
the 30th of the following April, 1635. He had taught pub- 
licly, it was said, *' that a magistrate ought not to tender an 

* Knowlea, p. 57, 61. Master John Cotton's Answer to Master Roger 
"Williams, p. 4. 

f Cotton's Answer, p. 4. Knowles, p. 61. .Mather, vii. 7. Backus, 
L 57. 

10* 



226 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

oath to an unregenerate man, for that we thereby have com= 
munion with a wicked man in the worship of God, and cause 
him to take the name of God in vain. He was heard before 
all the ministers, and very clearly confuted."* In the month 
of July he was again summoned to Boston, and some other 
dangerous opinions were now laid to his charge. He was ac- 
cused of maintaining: — That the magistrate ought not to 
punish the breach of the first table, otherwise than in such 
cases as did disturb the civil peace : — That a man ought not 
to pray with the unregenerate, though wife or child — That a 
man ought not to give thanks after the sacrament, nor after 
meat. But the aggravation of his offences was that, notwith- 
standing these crimes were charged upon him, the church at 
Salem, in spite of the magisterial admonitions, and the exhor- 
tations of the pastors, had called him to the office of teacher. 
To mark their sense of this recusancy, the Salem people 
were refused, three days after, the possession of a piece of 
land for which they had applied, and to which they had a 
just claim.f 

This flaOTant wrong; induced Mr. Williams and his church 
to write admonitory letters to the churches of which these 
magistrates were members, requesting them to admonish the 
magistrates of the criminality of their conduct, it being a 
*' breach of the rule of justice." The letters were thus 
addressed because the members of the churches were the 
only freemen, and the only parties interested in the civil 
government of the colony. They were without effect. His 
own people began to waver under the. pressure of ministerial 
power and influence. Mr. Williams's health too gave way, 
" by his excessive labors, preaching thrice a week, by labors 
night and day in the field ; and by travels night and day to 
go and come from the Court." Even his wife added to his 

* Knowles, p. 66. 

f So Winthrop. Knowles, pp. 68—10. Backus, i. 61, 68. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 227 

affliction by her reproaches, ** till at length he drew her to 
partake with him in the error of his way." He now declared 
his intention to withdraw communion from all the churches 
in the Bay, and from Salem also if they would not separate 
with him. His friend Endicot was imprisoned for justifying 
the letter of admonition, and Mr. Sharpe was summoned to 
appear to answer for the same. In October he was called 
before the court for the last time. All the ministers were 
present. They had already decided " that any one was 
worthy of banishment who should obstinately assert, that the 
civil magistrate might not intermeddle even to stop a church 
from apostacy and heresy."'- His letters were read, which 
he justified ; he maintained all his opinions. After a dispu- 
tation with Mr. Hooker, who could not " reduce him from 
any of his errors," he was sentenced to banishment in six 
weeks, all the ministers, save one, approving of the deed.f 

Before proceeding to detail the subsequent events of his 
history, it will be necessary to make a few remarks on the 
topics of accusation which were bought against Mr. Williams. 

The causes of his banishment are given by Mr. Williams in 
his examination of Mr. Cotton's letter, and with his account 
agrees Governor Winthrop's testimony cited above. Mr. 
Cotton, however, does not concur in this statement : the two 

« Bancroft, i. 373. 

f Knowles, pp. 71, 72. The sentence was as follows : — " Whereas Mr. 
Roger "Williams, one of the elders of the church of Salem, hath broached 
and divulged divers new and dangerous opinions, against the authority 
of magistrates ; as also writ letters of defamation, both of the magis- 
trates and the churches here, and that before any conviction, and yet 
maintaineth the same without any retractation ; it is therefore ordered 
that the said Mr. Williams shall depart out of this jurisdiction within 
six weeks, now next ensuing, which, if he neglect to perform, it shall be 
lawful for the governor and two of the magistrates to send him to some 
place out of this jurisdiction, not to return any more without license 
from the Court." Backus, i. 69, 70. 



228 



STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 



last causes he denies, giving as his reason, *' that many are 
known to hold both those opinions, and are yet tolerated not 
only to live in the commonwealth, but also in the fellowship 
of the churches." The other two points, he likewise asserts, 
were held by some, who yet were permitted to enjoy both 
civil and church liberties.* What then were the grounds of 
this harsh proceeding according to Mr. Cotton ? They were 
as follows : — "Two things there were, which to my best ob- 
servation, and remembrance, caused the sentence of his 
banishment: and two other fell in that hastened it. 1. His 

violent and tumultuous carriage against the patent 

2. The magistrates, and other members of the general Court 
upon intelligence of some episcopal and malignant practices 
against the country, they made an order of Court to take 
trial of the fidelity of the people, not by imposing upon them, 
but by offering to them an oath of fidelity. This oath when 
it came abroad, he vehemently withstood it, and dissuaded 
sundry from it, partly because it was, as he said, Christ's pre- 
rogative to have his office established by oath : partly be- 
cause an oath was a part of God's worship, and God's wor- 
ship was not to be put upon carnal persons, as he conceived 
many of the people to be." The two concurring causes 
were:— ^1. That notwithstanding his "heady and turbulent 
spirit," which induced the magistrates to advise the church at 
Salem not to call him to the office of teacher, yet the major 
part of the church made choice of him. And when for this 
the Court refused Salem the parcel of land, Mr. Wilhams 
stirred up the church to unite with him in letters of admoni- 
tion to the churches " whereof those magistrates were mem- 
bers, to admonish them of their open transgression of the rule 
of justice." 2. That when by letters from the ministers 
the Salem church was inclined to abandon their teacher, Mr. 
Williams renounced communion with Salem and all the 

* Cotton's Answer, p. 26. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 229 

churches in the Bay, refused to resort to public worship, and 
preached to " sundry who began to resort to his family," on 
the Lord's day.* 

On examination, it is evident that the two statements do 
not materially differ. Mr. Williams held the patents to be 
sinful " wherein Christian kings, so called, are invested with 
right by virtue of their Christianity, to take and give away 
the lands and countries of other men,"f It were easy to 
represent opposition to the patent of New England as over- 
throwing the foundation on which colonial laws were framed, 
and as a denial of the power claimed by the ministers and 
the General Court " to erect such a government of the 
church as is most agreeable to the word." Such was Mr. 
Cotton's view, and which he succeeded in impressing on the 
minds of the magistrates. Mr. "Williams may perhaps have 
acquired somewhat of his jealousy concerning these patents 
from the instructions of Sir Edward Coke, who so nobly 
withstood the indiscriminate granting of monopolies in the 
parliament of his native land. J There can be no question 
that Williams was substantially right. His own practice, 
when subsequently laying the basis for the state of Rhode 
Island, evinces the equity, uprightness, and generosity of his 
motives. Perhaps too his views upon the origin of all gov- 
ernmental power may have had some influence in producing 
his opposition. He held that the sovereignty lay in the hands 
of the people. K'o patent or royal rights could therefore be 
alleged as against the popular will. That must make rulers, 
confirm the laws, and control the acts of the executive. Be- 
fore it patents, privileges, and monopolies, the exclusive rights 
of a few, must sink away. 

Moreover, it is clear, from Cotton's own statement, that 
this question of the patent involved that of religious liberty. 

* Cotton's Answer, pp. 27 — 30. 

f Bloody Tenent more Bloody, p. 276. ;}: Bancroft, i. 327. 



230 STRUaGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

The colony claimed under it the right of erecting a church, 
of framing an ecclesiastical polity: and it exercised it. Eccle- 
siastical laws were made every whit as stringent as the canons 
of the establishment of the mother country. Already we have 
seen that church members alone could be freemen. Every 
adult person was compelled to be present at public congrega- 
tional worship, and to support both ministr}'- and church with 
payment of dues enforced by magisterial power.* " Three 
months was, by the law, the time of patience to the excom- 
municate, before the secular power was to deal with him :" 
then the obstinate person might be fined, imprisoned, or 
banished. Several persons were banished for noncompliance 
with the state religion. f In 1644, a law was promulgated 
against the baptists, by which " it is ordered and agreed, 
that if any person or persons, within this jurisdiction, shall 
either openly condemn or oppose the baptizing of infants," 
or seduce others, or leave the congregation during the ad- 
ministration of the rite, they " shall be sentenced to banish- 
ment." The same year we accordingly find that a poor man 
was tied up and whipped for refusing to have his child 
sprinkled.:]: Heresy, blasphemy, and some other the like 

* Mr. Cotton pleads that anabaptists and others were not compelled 
against conscience ; nor were they punished for conscience' sake ; but 
for sinning against conscience. Tenent Washed, pp. 165, 189. Backus, i. 98. 

f See Bloody Tenent pp. 186, 381 ; Bloody Tenent more Bloody, p. 
122. By the law of September 6, 1638, the time was extended to six 
months. Backus, i. 45, 98 ; Bancroft, i. 349. 

X " The Lady Moody, a wise and amiable religious woman, being 
taken with the error of denying baptism to infants, was dealt withal 
by many of the elders and others, and admonished by the church at 
Salem." To avoid more trouble, she went amongst the Dutch ; but was 
excommunicated. In 1651, the Rev. J. Clarke and Mr. 0. Holmes, of 
Rhode Island, for visiting a sick baptist brother in Massachusetts, were 
arrested, fined, imprisoned, and whipped. At an earlier period, they 
had been compelled to leave Plymouth for their opinions. Mr. Cotton 
approved of this. Backus, i. 146, 207, 225. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 231 

crimes, exposed the culprit to expatriation. It was against 
this course that Mr. Williams afterwards wrote his " Bloudy 
Tenent;" and through the "sad evil" "of the civil magis- 
trates dealing in matters of conscience and religion, as also of 
persecuting and hunting any for any matter merely spiritual 
and religious," which he opposed, was he banished.''^ 

The question of the patent could not therefore be discussed 
in the General Court without involving a discussion upon re- 
ligious liberty. Mr. Cotton has chosen to make most promi- 
nent, in his articles of accusation, the question of the origin 
of the patent ; the magistrate, whose statement is adduced 
by Mr. Williams, places in the forefront that of the magis- 
trate's power over conscience. As the matter stood, these 
two subjects were aUied. To doubt the one was to doubt 
the other. But Mr. Williams was decided as to the iniquity 
of both. 

On the subject of the denial of the oath of fidelity, it is 
evident, from Mr. Cotton's statement, that the oath owed its 
origin to intolerance. Episcopacy should have no place under 
congregational rule, no more than independency could be 
suffered to exist under the domination of the English 
hierarchy. But Mr. Williams appears to have objected to 
the oath chiefly on other grounds : it was allowed by all 
parties that oath-taking was a religious act. If so, it was 
concluded by Mr. Williams, in entire consistency with his 
other views, that, 1, It ought not to be forced on any, so far 
as it was religious ; nor, 2, could an unregenerate man take 
part in what was thought to be an act of religious worship. 
Whether an oath be a religious act, we shall not discuss ; but 
on the admitted principles of the parties engaged in this strife, 
Mr. Williams's argument seems to us irrefragable. 

On the concurring causes referred to by Mr. Cotton, it will 
be unnecessary to make extended comment. Mr. Cotton and 

* Williams's Letter to Endicot. Bloody Tenent more Bloody, p. 305. 



232 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS | 

Mr. Williams were representatives of the two great bodies of 
dissentients from the law-established church of England. One 
party deemed it to be an anti-christian church, its rites to be 
avoided, its ministry forsaken, its communion abjured : these 
were the separatists, or true Nonconformists, to whom Mr. 
"Williams belonged.* The other party, although declaiming 
against the supposed corruptions of the church, loved its 
stately service, its governmental patronage, its common 
prayer, and its parishional assemblies :f these were the pu- 
ritans who, in New England, became Independents, or Con- 
gregationalistsj- — in Old England, during the Commonwealth, 
chiefly Presbyterians, and some Independents : to these Mr. 
Cotton belonged. 

Mr. Wilhams thought it his dutj^ to renounce all connec- 
tion with the oppressor of the Lord's people, and also with 
those who still held communion with her.§ Let us not deem 
him too rigid in these principles of separation. There can 
be no fellowship between Christ and Belial. And if, as was 
indeed the case, the Anglican church too largely exhibited 
those principles which were subversive of man's inalienable 
rights, exercised a tyrannous and intolerable sway over the 
bodies and consciences of the people, and drove from her 
fold, as outcasts, many of her best and holiest children, — it is 

* *' Whilst he lived at Salem, he neither admitted, nor permitted any 
church members but such as rejected all communion with the parish as- 
semblies, so much as in hearing the word amongst them." Cotton's 
Answer, p. 64. See p. 397 of the Bloody Tenent. 

f " The substance of the true estate of churches abideth in their con- 
gregational assemblies." Cotton's Answer, p. 109. Cotton refers here 
to the parish congregations. 

X Mather's Magnalia, i. 21. 

§ Cotton charges Williams with attempting to draw away the Salem 
church from holding communion with all the churches of the Bay, " be- 
cause we tolerated our members to hear the word in the parishes of 
England." Tenent Washed, p. 166. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 233 

no wonder that they should in return regard her touch as 
polluting, her ecclesiastical frame as the work of anti-christ. 
The Congregationalists introduced her spirit and practice 
into the legislation of the JSTew World, and it behooved every 
lover of true liberty to stand aloof and separate from the 
evil. This did Mr. Williams. He was right in regarding 
the relation of the Congregational polity to the civil state in 
New England as imjylicitly a national church state, although 
that relation was denied to be explicitly national by Mr. 
Cotton and his brethren. " I affirm," said WilHams, " that 
that church estate, that religion and worship which is com- 
manded, or permitted to be hut one in a country, natioi^ or 
province, that church is not in the nature of the particular 
churches of Christ, but in the nature of a national or state 
church."* 

To this controversy we are indebted for Mr. Williams's book 
entitled "Mr. Cotton's Letter, Examined and Answered." 
While wanderino- amonor the uncivilized tribes of Indians, Mr. 
Cotton's letter came into Mr. Williams's hands. f It seems 
to have been a part of a somewhat extended correspondence 
between them, and to have originated in Mr. Cotton's two- 
fold desire to correct the aberrations, as he deemed them, of 
his old friend, and to shield himself from the charge of being 
not only an accessory, but to some degree the instigator of 
the sentence of banishment decreed against him. His de- 
fence of himself is unworthy of his candor, and betrays, by 
its subtle distinctions and passionate language, by his cruel 
insinuations and ready seizure of the most trifling inaccura- 
cies, a mind ill at ease and painfully conscious that he had 
dealt both unjustly and unkindly with his former companion 

* See Bloody Tenent p. 246. Bloody Tenent more Bloody, p. 230. 

f It must have reached Williams after his settlement at Providence. 
Cotton, in 164*7, says he wrote it about " half a score years ago," which 
would give the date of 1637. 



234 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

in tribulation. By some means, but without his knowledge, 
Mr. Cotton's letter got into print, to him most "unwelcome;" 
and while in England, in 1644, Mr. Williams printed his reply. 
It will be seen that Mr. Williams has given the whole of it : 
and with scrupulous fidelity, adding thereto his remarks and 
reasonings. Mr. Cotton, however, did not hesitate to aver 
the righteousness of the persecution and banishment which 
Williams endured.* 

In the Colonial Records, the date of Mr. Williams's sen- 
tence is November 3, (1635). He immediately withdrew 
from all church communion with the authors of his suflfer- 
ings. A few attached friends assembled around him, and 
preparations were made for departure.^ It would seem tliat 
he had, for some time, contemplated the formation of a set- 
tlement where liberty, both civil and religious, should be en- 
joyed. This reached the ears of his adversaries. His 
Lord's day addresses were attractive to many, and withdrew 
them from the congregations of the dominant sect. Pro- 
voked at " the increase of concourse of people to him on the 
Lord's day in private," and fearing the further extension of 
principles so subversive of their state-church proceedings* 
they resolved on Mr. Williams's immediate deportation. 
Two or three months had to elapse, of the additional time 
granted for his departure, before their sentence could take 
effect. Delay was dangerous : therefore the Court met at 
Boston on the 11th of January, 1636, and resolved that he 
should immediately be shipped for England, in a vessel then 
riding at anchor in the bay. A warrant was despatched 

* See Examination and Answer, p. 3'7'7. Cotton's Answer, p. 8, 9, 
13, 36-39. " I did never intend to say that I did not consent to the 
justice of the sentence when it was passed." 

f Cotton says, " Some of his friends went to the place appointed by 
himself beforehand, to make provision of housing and other necessaries 
against his coming." Answer, p. 8. This, however, is very doubtful. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 235 

summoning him to Boston. He returned answer tliat his 
life was in hazard ; and came not. A pinnace was sent to 
fetch him ; *' but when they came to his house, they found 
he had been gone three days before, but whither they could 
not learn."* 

His wife and two children, the youngest less than three 
months old, were left behind. By a mortgage on his prop- 
erty at Salem he had raised money to supply his wants. 
He then plunged into the im trodden wilds ; being *' denied 
the common air to breathe in, and a civil cohabitation upon 
the same common earth ; yea, and also without mercy and 
human compassion, exposed to winter miseries in a howling- 
wilderness. "■[" 

After fourteen weeks' exposure to frost and snow, "not 
knowing what bread or bed did mean," he ari'ived at See- 
konk,:t on the east bank of Pawtucket river. Here be began 
to build and plant. In the following expressive lines he seems 
to refer to the kind support afforded him by the Indians : — 

" God's providence is rich to his, 
Let none distrustful be ; 
In wilderness, in great distress, 
These ravens have fed me."§ 

Their hospitality he requited throughout his long life by 
acts of benevolence, and by unceasing efforts to benefit and 
befriend them. He taught them Christianity ; and was the 
first of the American pilgrims to convey to these savage tribes 
the message of salvation. 

* See Examination and Answer p. S88. Knowles, p. 13. Backus, i. 
70. Gov. Winthrop had privately advised him to leave the colony. The 
friendship of this eminent man was of frequent service to our exile. Cot- 
ton declares that the officer who served the warrant saw " no sign of sick- 
ness upon him." Answer, p. 57. This he might not choose to see. 

f See Examination and Answer, p. 370, Knowles, p. 395. 

X Now called Rehoboth. 

I Quoted from his " Key," &c. by Knowles. 101. 



236 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

Before his crops were ripe for harvest, he received intima- 
tion from the governor of Plymouth, that he had ** fallen into . 
the edge of their bounds," and as they were loath to offend 
the people of the Bay, he was requested to remove beyond 
their jurisdiction. With five companions he embarked in his 
canoe, descending the river, till arriving at a little cove on the 
opposite side, they were hailed by the Indians with the cry 
of " What cheer V'^ Cheered with this friendly salutation 
they went ashore. Again embarking, they reached a spot at 
the mouth of the Mohassuck river, where they landed, near to 
a spring — remaining to this day as an emblem of those vital 
blessings which flow to society from true liberty. That spot is 
"holy ground," where sprung up the first civil polity in the 
world permitting freedom to the human soul in things of 
God. There Roger Williams founded the town of Prov- 
idence. It was, and has ever been, the "refuge of distressed 
consciences." Persecution has never sullied its annals. 
Freedom to worship God was the desire of its founder — for 
himself and for all, and he nobly endured till it was accom- 
phshed. 

On reaching Providence, the first object of Mr. Williams 
would be to obtain possession of some land. This he ac- 
quired from the Narragansett Indians, the owners of the soil 
surrounding the bay into which he had steered his course. 
By a deed dated the 24th March, 1638, certain lands and 
meadows were made over to him by the Indian chiefs which 
he had purchased of them two years before, that is, at the 
time of his settlement amongst them. He shortly after recon- 
veyed these lands to his companions. In a deed dated 1661, 
he says, " I desired it might be for a shelter for persons dis- 
tressed for conscience. I then considering the condition of 
divers of my distressed countrymen, I communicated my said 
purchase unto my loving friends [whom he names], who then 

* The land at this spot still bears the designation of " What Cheer ?" 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 237 

desired to take shelter here with me."* This worthy con- 
ception of his noble mind was realized, and he lived to see a 
settled community formed wherein liberty of conscience was a 
primary and fundamental law. Thirty-five years afterward he 
could say, " Here, all over this colony, a great number of 
weak and distressed souls, scattered, are flying hither from 
Old and New England, the Most High and Only Wise hath, 
in his infinite wisdom, provided this country and this corner 
as a shelter for the poor and persecuted, according to their 
several persuasions. "f 

The year 1638 witnessed the settlement of Rhode Island, 
from which the state subsequently took its name, by some 
other parties, driven from Massachusetts by the persecution 
of the ruling clerical power. So great was the hatred or the 
envy felt towards the new colony, that Massachusetts framed 
a law prohibiting the inhabitants of Providence from coming 
within its bounds.:]: This was a cruel law, for thus trading 
was hindered with the English vessels frequenting Boston, 
from whence came the chief supplies of foreign goods. So 
great was the scarcity of paper from this cause among the 
Rhode Islanders, that " the first of their writings that are to 
be found, appear on small scraps of paper, wrote as thick, 
and crowded as close as possible." " God knows," says 
Williams, " that many thousand pounds cannot repay the 
very temporary losses I have sustained," by being debarred 
from Boston. § 

In March, 1639, Mr. Williams became a baptist, together 
with several more of his companions in exile. As none in the 
colony had been baptized, a Mr. Holliman was selected to 
baptize Mr. Williams, who then baptized Mr. Holliman and ten 

* Knowles, p. 103, 112. Backus, i. 90, 94. 
f Letter to Mason. Knowles, p. 398. 
:j: Backus, i. 95, 115. Knowles, p. 148. 
§ Knowles, p. 149, 896. 



238 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

others. Thus was founded the first baptist church in Amer- 
ica.=^ On the first of the following July, Mr. Williams and 
his wife, with eight others, were excommunicated by the 
church at Salem, then under the pastoral care of the cele- 
brated Hugh Peters. Thus was destroyed the last link which 
bound these exiles to the congregational churches of New 
England, where infant baptism and persecution abode, as in 
other churches, in sisterly embrace together.^ 

Mr. Williams appears to have remained pastor of the newly 
formed church but a few months. For, while retaining all 
his original sentiments upon the doctrines of God's word, and 
the ordinances of the church, he conceived a true ministry 
must derive its authority from direct apostolic succession or 
endowment : that, therefore, without such a commission he 
had no authority to assume the office of pastor, or be a 
teacher in the house of God, or proclaim to the impenitent 
the saving mercies of redemption. It is, however, by no 
means clear that he regarded the latter as wrong, for we find 
him in after days desiring to print several discourses which he 
had delivered amongst the Indians.^ He seems rather to 
have conceived that the church of Christ had so fallen into 
apostacy, as to have lost both its right form and the due ad- 
ministration of the ordinances, which could only be restored 
by some new apostolic, or specially commissioned messenger 
from above. Various passages in his writings will be met 
with which favor this view :§ the following is from his "Hire- 
ling Ministry:" "In the poor small span of my life, I de- 

Knowles, p. 165. Benedict, p. 441. Backus, i. 105. 

f Backus, i. 10*7. Knowles, p, llQ. Hanbury, iii. 511. 

X Backus, i. 107, 108. Knowles, p. llO. 

§ Cotton says, he fell " from all ordinances of Christ dispensed in any 
church way, till God shall stir up himself, or some new apostles, to re- 
cover and restore all ordinances, and churches of Christ out of the ruins 
of antichristian apostacy." Cotton's Answer, p. 2. The insinuation in 
this passage is both unjust and untrue. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 239 

sired to have been a diligent and constant observer, and have 
been myself many ways engaged, in city, in country, in court, 
in schools, in universities, in churches, in Old and New Eng- 
land, and yet cannot, in the holy presence of God, bring in 
the result of a satisfying discovery, that either the begetting 
ministry of the apostles or messengers to the nations, or the 
feeding or nourishing ministry of pastors and teachers, ac- 
cording to the first institution of the Lord Jesus, are yet re- 
stored and extant."* From this passage it would seem that 
his objections were rather owing to the imperfection of the 
church in its revived condition, than to the want of a right 
succession in the ministry. These imperfections could be re« 
moved by a new apostoHc ministry alone. He therefore was 
opposed to " the oflBce of any ministry, but such as the Lord 
Jesus appointeth." Perhaps in the following assertion of 
Mr. Cotton we have the true expression of Mr. WiUiams's 
views. He conceived "that the apostacy of anti-christ hath 
so far corrupted all, that there can be no recovery out of that 
apostacy till Christ shall send forth new apostles to plant 
churches anew."f 

The constantly increasing number of settlers in the new 
colony rendered a form of civil government necessary. A 
model was drawn up, of which the essential principles were 
democratic. The power was invested in the freemen, orderly 
assembled, or a major part of them. 'None were to be ac- 
counted dehnquents for doctrine, " provided it be not directly 
repugnant to the government or laws established." And a 
few months later this was further confirmed by a special act, 
"that that law concerning liberty of conscience in point of 
doctrine, be perpetuated." Thus liberty of conscience was 
the basis of the legislation of the colony of Rhode Island, 

* Knowles, p. 1*72. Callender's Historical Discourse, by Dr. R 
Elton, p. 101. 

f Cotton's Answer, p. 9. 



240 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS 

and its annals have remained to this day unsulHed by the 
blot of persecution.'* But many were the examples of an 
opposite course occurring in the neighboring colony of 
Boston. Not satisfied with having driven Williams and many 
more from their borders b^ their oppressive measures against 
conscience, the General Court laid claim to jurisdiction over 
the young and rapidly increasing settlements of the sons of 
liberty. This, concurring with other causes, led the inhabi- 
tants of Rhode Island and Providence to request Mr. Williams 
to take passage to England, and, if possible, obtain a 
charter defining their rights, and giving them independent 
authority, freed from the intrusive interference of the Massa- 
chusetts Bay. 

In the month of June, 1643, Mr. Williams set sail from 
New York for England, for he was not permitted to enter the 
territories of Massachusetts, and to ship from the more con- 
venient port of Boston, although his services in allaying 
Indian ferocity, and preventing by his influence the attacks 
of the native tribes upon their settlements, were of the high- 
est value and of the most important kind.f 

At the time of his arrival in England, the country was 
involved in the horrors of civil war. By an ordinance dated 
Nov. 3, 1643, the affairs of the colonies were intrusted to a 
board of commissioners, of which Lord Warwick was the 
head. Aided by the influence of his friend, Sir Henry Vans, 
Mr. Williams quickly obtained the charter he sought, dated 
March 14, 1644, giving to the " Providence Plantations in the 

* Knowles, p. 181, Callender, p. 159. Backus, i. 112. Bancroft, i. 
380. The attachment of the Rhode Islanders to this great principle re- 
ceives a curious illustration in the case of one Joshua Verin, who was 
deprived for a time of his franchise for refusing to his wife Uberty of 
conscience, in not permitting her to go to Mr. "Williams's meeting as 
often as requisite. Backus, i. 95. 

f Backus, i. 147. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 241 

Narragansett Bay," full power to rule themselves, by any 
form of government they preferred.* 

With this charter Mr. Williams, in the summer of the 
same year, returned to New England, and landed at Boston, 
Sept. I7th, emboldened to tread this forbidden ground by a 
commendatory letter to the Governor and Assistants of the 
Bay, from several noblemen and members of parliament. The 
first elections under this charter were held at Portsmouth in 
May, 1641, when the General Assembly then constituted, 
proceeded to frame a code of laws, and to commence the 
structure of their civil government. It was declared in the 
act then passed, " that the form of government established in 
Providence Plantations is democratical, that is to say, a 
government held by the free and voluntary consent of all, or 
the greater part of the free inhabitants." The conclusion of 
this Magna Charta of Rhode Island is in these memorable 
words : " These are the laws that concern all men, and these 
are the penalties for the transgression thereof, which, by com- 
mon consent, are ratified and established throughout the 
whole colony. And otherwise than thus, what is herein for- 
bidden, all men may walk as their consciences persuade them, 
every one in the name of his God. And let the saints of 
THE Most High walk in this colony without molesta- 
tion, in the name of Jehovah their God, forever and 
EVER."f Mr. Roger Williams was chosen assistant, and in 
subsequent years governor. Thus under the auspices of this 
noble-minded man was sown the germ of modern democratic 
institutions, combining therewith the yet more precious seed 
of religious liberty. 

We here trace no further the history of Roger Williams in 
relation to the state of which he was the honored founder. 
To the period at which we have arrived, their story is indis- 

* Backus, i. 148. Knowles, p. 198. 
f Elton, in notes to Callender, p. 230. Knowles, p. 208. 
11 



242 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 

solubly allied together. Others, imbued with his principles, 
henceforth took part in working out the great and then un- 
solved problem — how liberty, civil and religious, could exist 
in harmony with dutiful obedience to the rightful laws. Pos- 
terity is witness to the result. The great communities of the 
Old World are daily approximating to that example, and re- 
cognizing the truth and power of those principles which throw 
around the name of Roger Williams a halo of imperishable 
glory and renown. 



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